Problem 1686. Generate a melodic contour string matrix
Parsons code is a surprisingly effective way to identify music by its melodic motion. That is, with each successive note, does the pitch go up, down, or stay the same. No effort is made to capture the length of the interval between notes. The result is a lossy but useful "thumbprint" of a musical piece.
You will be given a string in Parsons code. By convention, the first note is denoted by *. Each note thereafter is either "u" for up, "d" for down, or "r" for repeat. The expected output is a string matrix showing the tune's contour. It can contain only space, star, dash, forward slash, and backward slash (ASCII values 32, 42, 45, 47, and 92 respectively). The output matrix should be the smallest possible bounding box that can contain all the nonspace characters. That is, there should be no empty rows or columns.
Examples:
str = '*rrr' melody = '*-*-*-*'
str = '*du' melody = ['* *' ' \ / ' ' * ']
The "Happy Birthday" song! str = '*rududdrudud' melody = [' * * ' ' / \ / \ ' '*-* * * * * ' ' \ / \ / \ ' ' *-* * *']
Solution Stats
Problem Comments
-
5 Comments
The last 3 tests are incorrect.
Dimensions of matrices being concatenated are not consistent.
I admit they look wrong, but the actual text in the MATLAB code runs properly. I just re-scored some answers and they worked fine. It must be some kind of HTML display problem. I'll check into it.
Solution Comments
Show commentsGroup

Basics - Binary Logic
- 10 Problems
- 958 Finishers
- Find the longest sequence of 1's in a binary sequence.
- Convert given decimal number to binary number.
- Find out sum and carry of Binary adder
- Binary numbers
- Given an unsigned integer x, find the largest y by rearranging the bits in x
- Bit Reversal
- Relative ratio of "1" in binary number
- Binary code (array)
- Converting binary to decimals
- There are 10 types of people in the world
Problem Recent Solvers58
Problem Tags
Community Treasure Hunt
Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!
Start Hunting!