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MusicXML DTD Hits 1.0; Browser Support Next?
base_chakra writes "Two years since its initial release, the MusicXML music notation document type has finally reached v1.0. MusicXML is an (you guessed it) XML-based musical score format developed by Recordare LLC, and derived from the MuseData and Humdrum projects. Although MusicXML was quickly adopted by virtually every major music notation software products available, a standard non-binary format for rendering music notation on the web is something that's still sorely needed. Despite its unfortunate limitations, will MusicXML eventually become the de facto means of rendering music notation online, or will it fall into obscurity like so many document types?"
Not only MIDI and MOD are free, open formats, so do the tools that make and play them! Why bother for another format, when binary ones are doing the job greatly? Besides, storing music in text formats are too bloated to be useful anyway.
The project seems dead or near death right now, but it would have been a great tool for teaching music in schools. Especially if it turned out like Guitar Pro.
Guitar pro is not free and uses a proprietory file format. But it is an excellent way to learn guitar by "playing along" with the pros.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
From the faq...
In short MIDI knows nothing about music notation. It can not render the music score that it is playing for you, on your computer screen. There full answer is in the FAQ. I suggest reading that.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
From the faq:
Is MusicXML free?
The MusicXML DTD is available under a royalty-free license from Recordare. This license is modeled on those from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). If you follow the terms of the license, you do not need to pay anyone to use MusicXML in your products or research
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In theory, I suppose, you could try to make an XML DTD propriatary, if you wanted go around suing anyone with a pair of eyes (it isn't a file format, it's a Document Type Defintion. A human readable text file defining the tags for a human readable text file. You can save the XML text in any file format you like).
The "trade secret" is pretty much out of the bag as soon as you read the standard.
KFG
Somebody shuold mention the Mutopia Project here, and I gues I'm the guy to do it.
They have been at it a while converting old editions and manuscripts. Help 'em out if ya can!
They've currently got 387 pieces of music going, and they're adding more and more quicker and quicker.
Aleatoric music, chance music, etc. The eclectic stuff. Go to your local uni's music library and look up composers like John Cage, George Crumb, Donald Erb, Joseph Schwantner, et al. That's what he meant by funky. The scores are frequently beautiful to look at but are a pain in the ass to read because they DON'T conform to the norm.
Based on what I see from Lilypond's introduction, it isn't capable of producing print music that doesn't conform to that definition of "music" we're so used to. For example, music without a key or time signature, nonstandard key signatures, cutout scores, feathered beaming, ossia measures, etc.
Also, as someone who has done work in engraving and copying print music, Lilypond would need to have a nicer MIDI-compatible interface thrown on top of it to compete. As a file format I think it will work, but as a complete solution it is not viable as it is. No copyist I know would sit down with a text editor and try to copy over scores or parts. It's too cumbersome -- I tried to do it. I had a copy job that I originally tried to do in Lilypond via the text interface and copying one part from the score took almot nine hours of typing, rendering it, fixing it, and re-rendering it to ensure that it came out right. Meanwhile, if I sit down with Finale, I can have it done in an hour.
It's come a long way, but there's a lot of work left to do before it's ready to hit the big time.
Regardless -- feel free to prove me wrong by posting a link to a rendered example of such music. I'd love to be proven wrong in this department.
Take a good look at the format. Its a spec defining how to digitize musical scores. When was the last time you went looking online for the score of a particular website? Whe was the last time you went looking online for a score that you could legally download?
This is an important protocol - for all those projects out there digitizing old music scores. Think classical music like Beethoven/Mozart. Up until recently, everyone in this buisness made their own homegrown system. Just to give a taste of where this project comes from:
These are just the standards I know of. This site lits many more I've never heard of. Hopefully MusicXML obsoletes these countless competing standards so those who research in this field can finally exchange data with one another - without porting around and maintating a collection of converters.
However, this really is irrelevant for the vast majority of slashdot readers. Unless your trying to digitize musical transcriptions, this standard is a curiosity at best. I have to wonder why it made the slashdot front page.
The number you have dialed is imaginary, please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
Here is some gregorian chant, or polymetric stuff.
nonstandard key signatures,
See this example
cutout scores, feathered beaming, ossia measures, etc.
These are not supported, although feathered beaming would not be difficult to implement. However, I have played in a ensemble that plays 20th and 21st century music exclusively for the past five years, and I have rarely seen the contraptions that you mention in modern music; most of it is notated with traditional notation, with a lot of time-sig changes. In fact, publishers nowadays will not engrave such funky scores, but have them written by hand, or they will reproduce the manuscript (Unless you happen to be called Xenakis or Berio.)
I had a copy job that I originally tried to do in Lilypond via the text interface and copying one part from the score took almot nine hours of typing, rendering it, fixing it, and re-rendering it to ensure that it came out right.
YMMV; I have recently produced parts & score (4 pages for the 2nd part). It took me approximately 30 minutes. Granted, it was a straightforward piece, but the speed depends much on how well-versed you are with the software. Finally, LilyPond has progressed very much in usability over the last year. If the last time you tried it was more than a year ago, you might want to give it another go.
Lilypond would need to have a nicer MIDI-compatible interface thrown on top of it to compete.
Have you seen RoseGarden and NoteEdit.
Han-Wen Nienhuys -- LilyPond
Er... anyone who wants to produce sheet music?
Seriously, what was your point? We're discussing a music notation document type here - RTFA. And manuscript is the standard way to notate music, one that goes back hundreds of years, and that hundreds of thousands of people use right now. MIDI is a (very good) solution to a completely different problem, that of controlling synthesisers - it's been extended into other forms of performance and sequencing, but it's completely unsuited to music notation: see my other comment here for why.
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