Keynote - a language for musical expressions.
15 October 1988
Keynote is a programming language for manipulating and generating music. In the same way that awk is specialized for the convenient processing of text, keynote is specialized for the convenient processing of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) data. Most professional and amateur musicians use MIDI on personal computers such as the Macintosh and IBM PC, while only a few UNIX(R) systems currently have MIDI interfaces. It seems inevitable that these two disjoint worlds, separately based on wildly successful standardizations, will come together. Keynote should be useful when that happens. This memo describes the history, intentions, and features of keynote. The language reference manual and manual pages are attachments.