1. MusicXml: Symbolic Music Interchange Format
Carmine Casciato
MUMT 611
Thursday, January 27th, 2005

2. Overview Needs addressed by MusicXML Structure of a MusicXML document
Limitations of MusicXML

3. Prior Work Music notation
MuseData - generic, platform independent, multi-purpose
Humdrum - unlimited amount of representation syntax can be defined
-both time and part information can be used
Eleanor Selfridge-Field’s Beyond MIDI: A Handbook of Musical Codes

4. Prior Work (cont.)
Notational Interchange File Format - focuses on graphic score output, unwieldy for performance apps
Standard Music Description Language - a Standard Generalized Markup Language application, a meta-DTD of the Hypermedia/Time-Based Structured Language
-specialized nomenclature eg. cantus, gamut, nominal pitch, fictum adjustment, music ficta gamut
-generalized to encode works beyond Western notation, any notation
-never implemented commercially
MIDI - does not encode notational data such as stem direction, rest information, or enharmonic notes

5. MuseData Database MuseData/ COMPOSER1/ COMPOSER2/ . . . COMPOSERn/
INDEX
SOURCE1/
SOURCE2/
SOURCEn/
WORK1/
WORK2/
WORKn/
STAGE1/
MVT1/
MVT2/
MVTn/
STAGE2/

6. MuseData Note Information
measure 1
E4 2
D4 2
C4 2
rest 2
measure 2
measure 3
G4 2
F4 1
E4 4
measure 4

7. Commercial Emphasis
“Since its introduction in 2000, MusicXML has become the most quickly adopted symbolic music interchange format…with support by market and technology leaders in both music notation and music scanning.”
“MusicXML has been developed from a commercial perspective as opposed to a research perspective.”
To do for online sheet music and music notation software what MIDI did for electronic synthesizers
(Good 2002)

8. Applications Supporting MusicXML

9. Advantages of XML Text based Platform independent
Hierarchical Structures
Self-defining
Humdrum requires UNIX savvy, MuseData tools run in custom IDE

10. MusicXML
“MusicXML is basically an XML updating of MuseData, with the addition of some key concepts from Humdrum. Since both formats have been used primarily for work in classical and folk music, MusicXML was extended beyond those boundaries to better support contemporary popular music.”
Supports Common Western Notation from the 17th century onwards
Popular music notation (guitar chord fingerings)
Documents are decoded by Document Type Definitions
MIDI information can also be encoded
Adopts Humdrum approach: part-based vs. time-based
Does not contain presentation information
MusicXML DTD is under royalty free licence to encourage development

11. Hello World!
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE score-partwise PUBLIC
"-//Recordare//DTD MusicXML 1.0 Partwise//EN"
"
<score-partwise>
<part-list>
<score-part id="P1">
<part-name>Music</part-name>
</score-part>
</part-list>

12. Hello World! <part id="P1"> <measure number="1">
<attributes>
<divisions>1</divisions>
<key>
<fifths>0</fifths>
</key>
<time>
<beats>4</beats>
<beat-type>4</beat-type>
</time>
<clef>
<sign>G</sign>
<line>2</line>
</clef>
</attributes>

13. Hello World! <note> <pitch> <step>C</step>
<octave>4</octave>
</pitch>
<duration>4</duration>
<type>whole</type>
</note>
</measure>
</part>
</score-partwise>

14. Limitations Restricts itself to Common Western Notation
Verbose (Seven times larger than MuseData file with same information)
Use of DTDs versus Schemas
-Extensibility vs Stronger typing
Useful in an academic setting?
-Does not have existing toolset (Humdrum)
-Does not encode presentation information
-however…
We've tried them all and find SharpEye, with post-processing in Finale (and several other things downstream of that) the most useful…I suspect that each program will suit best the repertories on which it is trained. We work on classical music, and that seems to be SharpEye's forte.
by Seldridge-Field to the Music-IR list on OCR (January 25th)

15. Future work
Future work: Nonstandard key signatures; Placement and orientation; Position;Sound attributes - reverb, pan, pedals; Copyright protection;
Browser Plugin

16. Resources
Good, Michael, MusicXML in Practice: Issues in Translation and Analysis. Proceedings of the First International Conference MAX 2002: Musical Applications Using XML : Milan, September 19-20, 2002.
Cunningham, Stuart, Suitability of MusicXML as a Format for Computer Music Notation and Interchange. Available from Center for Applied Internet Research