This looks useful and fun, but without programmatic ways of specifying notes (i.e. ‘$v1 = $v2 + 12’) it’s not much of a “programming language” and mostly just a “text based notation system”.
Of course there are also varying definitions of what a programming language is. For instance, I consider CSS to be a programming language, but I know many people disagree with that position (and that's okay). I personally don't think that a "programming language" must be a general-purpose, turing-complete language. Alda seems to be a non-general purpose, turing-incomplete language. At this point though, we're maybe getting into semantics a bit.
Syntax change: https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/blob/master/doc/alda-2-mig...
Out of curiosity, on what basis do consider CSS to be a programming language? And does it applies to versions prior to CSS3 too?
They almost always seem to be simply "music notation", not music programming. At the end of the day, it's not that different from sheet music, just written slightly differently.
If I wanted to actually program music based on this, could I? Could I write a loop that plays random notes on the pentatonic scale? Or that systematically plays through every scale, without writing out all the notes by hand?