Tutorial of MusicXML An Open Format For Music Notation Present by Ming-Jing Ho

2 Introduction to MusicXML  Representing music in computer format 1. Audio – A recording of a musical performance, as in CDs 2. Symbolic – Underlying musical data (pitches, rhythms) as in MIDI – Can published in music notation – Can’t create automatically from audio

3 Introduction to MusicXML  Need for a new music interchange format  Music notation publication has great Internet potential  Each music program has its own proprietary format  Or published as PDF images with no musical semantics  The only common interchange format MIDI  Does not meet publication needs

4 Interchange Format Before MusicXML  NIFF  Represents music data graphically, with more notation data than MIDI  But worse than MIDI for performance and analysis applications, ex. Music retrieval  SMDL  General-purpose music format  Overly complex; never implemented commercially

5 Goal of MusicXML Approach  A universal translator for common Western musical notation  Supports notation, analysis, information retrieval, and performance applications  Augments, but does not replace, specialized proprietary formats  Adequate, not optimal, for diverse music applications

6 Design of MusicXML  Begin public beta test at October 2001  Recordare provide some software tools  Appeal as a technology to help solve the music interchange problem

7 Design of MusicXML  Base on two academic music format  MuseData  Stanford University  Humdrum  Ohio State University

8 Support Software

9 Performance Part of MusicXML  Attributes  Divisions  Key  Time  Transpose  Pitch & Duration  Chord  Other informations  Lyric, sound suggestions,etc.

10 Notation Basics in MusicXML  Attributes  Stave, Clef, Time, Directive  Musical directions  Note appearance  Symbolic Note type, Stems, etc.

11 Other Representation of MusicXML  Tablature in MusicXML  Fret and String  String turing  Hammer-ons and Pull-offs

12 Other Representation of MusicXML  Percussion in MusicXML  Unpitched notes  Staff lines, measure style, etc.

13 in MusicXML Music

14 in MusicXML G 2 C 4 4 whole

15 MusicXML v.s. NIFF Original scanned data Via MusicXML Via NIFF

16 Music Software Development  MusicXML can use a much wider range of development than existing formats  Ex. Finale plug-in require C or C++ MuseData tools run on TenX  MusicXML  Visual Basic using MSXML parser on Windows  Java using the Xerces parser  C using no parser on Windows

17 Untested Features in MusicXML  Harmonic element  Sound-related attribute of the note element  Non-controlling attributes of the measure element  Tremolos represented automatically using repeat beams  Print element attributes  Other attributes

18 Future Directions  Now MusicXML can handle the basics of interchange between notation and performance 1. Test and refine MusicXML with retrieval and analysis applications – Have made an initial working draft using XQuery – Compare with MPEG-7 musical descriptor 2. Reach out to more music software developers and publishers to broaden MusicXML’s reach