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Music Media

MusicXML DTD Hits 1.0; Browser Support Next? 238

Posted by michael from the keeping-score dept.
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?"
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MusicXML DTD Hits 1.0; Browser Support Next? More

MusicXML DTD Hits 1.0; Browser Support Next?

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  • "XML-based musical score format developed by Recordare LLC," how could i have guessed that?
    • "XML-based musical score format developed by Recordare LLC,"

      Steps to guessing:

      1. Focus on the XML-based musical score format half of the sentence, rather that the developed by Recordare LLC portion.

      2. Realize the name of the format is MusicXML

      3. Guess

      Now, that is not to hard, is it?
    • Lets hope that Microsoft won't try to patent this also. :-)

  • Great! (Score:5, Funny)

    by thrillbert ( 146343 ) * on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @06:35PM (#8105325) Homepage
    Music and XML, two formats I can't read worth a damn coming together in one great package...

    I guess it's time to read up on XML and learn what all this hoopla is about! <g>

    ---
    The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
    • -- George Bernard Shaw

  • Easy answer (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ENOENT ( 25325 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @06:37PM (#8105347) Homepage Journal
    If the format is open and free, then it has a good chance of becoming widespread. Otherwise, no.

    Thanks for asking.

    • Re:Easy answer (Score:2, Informative)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      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

      ****

      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

    • Re:Easy answer (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mhesseltine ( 541806 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @07:03PM (#8105667) Homepage Journal

      Examples of widespread file formats:

      • MS Word
      • MS Excel
      • MS Powerpoint
      • Macromedia Flash
      • Autocad DWG (if you're into engineering)
      • Adobe Pagemaker
      • Quicken data files

      I'm sorry to say, but marketing seems to have a much more profound effect on the spread of a file format than its openness and freedom.

    • Gee, GIF and MP3 prove this point well . . . or, not.

  • SVG First (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bay43270 ( 267213 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @06:39PM (#8105362) Homepage
    We still can't get good SVG support in a browser (unless you have IE on window/mac and Adobe's plugin installed). I can't imagine supporting MusicXML in the browser before SVG... besides, once SVG is supported, XSLT should be able to transform MusicXML to SVG, SVG Print, or PDF.
    • ...besides, once SVG is supported, XSLT should be able to transform MusicXML to SVG, SVG Print, or PDF.

      Where is it going to get all those funny obscure fonts that music notation uses?

      Saying just use XSLT to convert MusicXML to SVG, I think is like saying just use XSLT to convert MathML to SVG. You are going to have to draw every obscure symbol the Music or Math notation needs and your resulting SVG document would be impractical in size.

      Nop, I don't think that would work very well.

      • Good point. How about using GNU Lilypond [lilypond.org] to draw all those obscure symbols? It does a great job, and it's free.
      • You wouldn't use a font. Many Music fonts (and math fonts) draw the same character once in each position; each in it's own glyph. With SVG, you simply draw a note:

        <g name="wholeNote">
        <circle cx="0" cy="0" r="40" class="wholeNote"/>
        </g>

        And draw that same note as many times as needed. No need to make a separate glyph for C and D note:

        <use xlink:href="#wholeNote" x="580" y="450" />
        <use xlink:href="#wholeNote" x="560" y="490" />

        Space may be an issue, but MusicXML isn't ex
      • The poster has a point, that it's neat to use standard templates to convert XML formats. You are correct that it wouldn't be easy to do such conversions...of course it's not entirely necessary to do them either. The point the poster was making is that it's possible...look how many problems we still have simply displaying a MS Word format simply because it's binary!

        I think you miss what XML formats were designed for. They designed XML to be flexible enough to represent high level concepts [like music

  • lets give XEMO a hand (Score:4, Informative)

    by Kunta Kinte ( 323399 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @06:41PM (#8105401) Journal
    The XEMO [xemo.org] Project is a venture to get a sturdy MusicXML studio/rendering application.

    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.com].

    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.

    • You don't need to revive XEMO, there is another promising open-source music editing application: Rosegarden [all-day-breakfast.com]. After several false starts, development on it now seems to be proceeding well. They've already had a release this year. I'm sure MusicXML support could be added without too much trouble, if it isn't in there already.

  • What about ABC? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zgwortz962 ( 641208 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @06:43PM (#8105421)

    There already is a fairly widespread musical notation format in use on the web. It's called ABC [gre.ac.uk]. There's even a Sourceforge [sourceforge.net] site for it.

    That said, ABC isn't perfect - it's evolved in many ambiguous and incompatible ways over the years, making it difficult to code a common parser. MusicXML might be better suited for that job, or for professional use.

    For casual use, though, ABC is tough to beat.

    • Part of the beauty of an XML document, is that you do not have to code a parser at all. You only have to choose one of the many free or commercial parsers already available. This is not a minor benefit.

      Ohh, and the parsers are content agnostic. Music, accounting data, children's stories, whatever. Same parsers.
      • Yeah, that's great. Here's a tune written in ABC:

        X:0
        T:Maid Behind the Bar
        M:4/4
        L:1/8
        Q:150 #Tempo indication
        R:Reel
        K:D
        A|FAAB AFED| FAAB A2de|fBBA Bcde|fdef edBA| FAAB AFED|FAAB A2de|fBBA BcdB|AFEF D3:||
        g|faag fdde|(3fed ad fddf| gfga beef|(3gfe be geea|fgaf bfaf|defd e2de|fBBA BcdB|AFEF D3:||

        Notice anything about that? Well, probably not, if you're not a musician. But any musician should be able to spot that for monotonic music, ABC is damned easy to read. I've no idea what MusicXML looks like, but I don

  • A good thing for Mozilla? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nautical9 ( 469723 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @06:43PM (#8105432) Homepage
    If Mozilla and other open source browsers implement a workable rendering engine for this, it may encourage others to give Mozilla a shot where they otherwise wouldn't. Of course, IE would follow at some point if they found out people were switching, but at that point people will have hopefully seen the light. (For all I know, mozilla already has it... kitchen sink and all that).

    I don't know what kind of audience would really care about music notation, but I know there are a bunch of us guitar-wanna-bes who frequent good ol' ASCII-art notation sites for our favorite songs, which are obviously lacking in detail. And word can spread quickly if people are notating using this format and recommending a proper browser to view them with.

    Here's hoping...

    • Re:A good thing for Mozilla? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @07:20PM (#8105856) Journal
      Of course, IE would follow at some point
      • 12-08-2008: MSIE 7.2 released, capable of using MusicXML
      • 13-08-2008: MSIE 7.2.1 released, includes patch in MusicXML rendering engine that fixes a crash when looking at Celine Dion sheet music. Both fans of Celine Dion are relieved.
      • 18-09-2008: First remote admin exploit found in MSIE's implementation of MusicXML. Involves Shania Twain music.
      • 26-03-2009: MSIE 7.2.2 released, fixes issue due to Shania Twain music by refusing to show Shania Twain music. Shania Twain herself inprisoned under the DMCA for exploiting MSIE and never heard from again. World peace becomes a reality.
      • 03-04-2009: MSIE 7.2.3 released, includes patch in DRM module of MusicXML rendering engine so that you can only look at sheet music of songs you paid an additional $ 24,95 for.
      • 08-06-2009: RIAA claims enermous losses due to MusicXML.
      • 12-09-2009: RIAA sues twelve year old girl using illegal MusicXML printouts to learn to play piano.
      • 13-11-2009: MSIE 7.2.4 released, includes patch in MusicXML rendering engine that fixes a crash when showing a specific chord.
      • 12-01-2010: Duke Nukem Forever released simultaneously with HL4, Doom6 and The Sims expansion set nr 834.
        • 12-31-2005: the idea of creating new algorithms has been patented in USPTO. USA became a country where freedom of thinking is against IP laws.
        • 12-31-2006: the last software company has moved its business overseas. USA doesn't produce any software anymore.
        • 12-31-2007: Senate made a law fixing the status quo: now any creative process in USA is against the law. America is officially a graveyard of creativity.
  • I think they are being very reasonable with their licensing structures.
    1: The Format is fee-free provided you follow the license
    2: The software is not free/OS. SO? Not everything should be free. I am ALL about OO.o and Linux, and whatnot, but trying to claim that all software should be free is just stupid, and giving list "unfortunate limitations" jab is unfair.

    Would you prefer the XML format they designed to be GPLed? Wouldn't that make it useless? Everyone could modify the format and then you wouldn
    • The complaint is not about their closed-source software. The complaint is that the XML DTD actually has a older BSD style license which requires attribution.
    • 1: The Format is fee-free provided you follow the license
      Sounds like the Adobe business model. The Acrobat reader is free for the asking. If you want to create a bunch of Acrobat files using anti-copy features or E-reader format, well then you have to pay the piper.
  • I used to love Lilypond [lilypond.org]. You do have to think in LaTeX to use it, but once you get over it, the output is fantastic - looks like an expensive professionally published score. The output from most other nice GUI Windows/Mac programs always looked slightly on the cheesy side.

    So it looks like now I could take Finale-produced XML output, run it through xml2ly and get my Lilypond sheet music. Has anyone tried it?

    • It's not technically latex, AFAIAA. It uses Tex for output, but the syntax of the lilypond markup language is different. That said, yes, the output is simply gorgeous. This example [lilypond.org] was the clincher. It's so jaw droppingly better looking than Finale, I don't even want to try to joke about it. Of course, I always felt like the key benefit of lilypond was not paying $600 for a license.

  • Hoping for the best (Score:4, Interesting)

    by UninvitedCompany ( 709936 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @06:45PM (#8105457)
    I'm skeptical, but hoping for the best with this one.

    There is a clear need for a better way to share music notation. At wikipedia [wikipedia.org], there has never been a consensus so TeX generated by Lilypond or something similar is used. That works poorly, because it is hard to integrate with CGI, and without integration only users who have Lilypond themselves can contribute.

    Same set of problems at composerplanet.com [composerplanet.com], though they are still getting their site together and haven't chosen a strategy. Looks like .PNG and .JPG images will be the de facto standard. Ick.

    Lilypond is free, and runs on Linux, but is unlikely to become much of an interchange standard because the UI isn't accessible to the vast majority of musicians, who are as a rule not experts on writing something according to a context-free grammar. Besides, Lilypond is best for typesetting-quality layout, at which it does indeed excel.

    Whatever the solution becomes, the ability to share scores with ease will touch off another wave of handwringing among sheet music publishers. I just yesterday received a book with all of Scott Joplin's piano music in it -- all written before 1915 -- and guess what? It says right on the front page that it is against the law to copy them! So far, most musicians don't know any better, but if MusicXML comes to pass, that may all change.

    • Re:Hoping for the best (Score:5, Informative)

      by Yohahn ( 8680 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @07:08PM (#8105721)
      Somebody shuold mention the Mutopia Project [mutopiaproject.org] 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.

    • Re:Hoping for the best (Score:2, Interesting)

      by WWWWolf ( 2428 )

      Lilypond is free, and runs on Linux, but is unlikely to become much of an interchange standard because the UI isn't accessible to the vast majority of musicians, who are as a rule not experts on writing something according to a context-free grammar. Besides, Lilypond is best for typesetting-quality layout, at which it does indeed excel.

      I'm not a musician, but I'm definitely a printer (or that's my heart's calling, or some other lame explanation like that). From my point of view, Lilypond rules. It's so

  • And what was wrong with Lilypond's format [lilypond.org]? I know it's not that pretty [lilypond.org] but it works and is unencumbered. Was it because it wasn't buzzword compliant [xml.com]?

    • Re:Lillypond (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hanwen ( 8589 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @07:03PM (#8105666) Homepage Journal
      What people don't get about music, is that defining formats is quite trivial. The hard part of music notation is actually generating it.

      I've been working on LilyPond for the past eight years, and we're now finally reaching a stage where the output can be taken seriously. I estimate that it took over 4 man-years of work to develop the current source code (60k lines of C++, 10k Scheme, and 10k python). Of all that source, less than 10 % is concerned with the file format, and they form the easy bits. When it comes to notation, file formats are not the problem.

      If you want to read more in-depth information on notation vs. music representation , I recommend to read the essay at lilypond.org [lilypond.org].

      Regarding buzzword compliancy: have a look at our XML format [lilypond.org], but like I said: the format is besides the point. Han-Wen (LilyPond author)

  • It makes files so absolutely huge. Even something like "A" is a least 14 bytes, whereas in a binary format, it would probably be 2 at most (identifier byte and note byte).

    Binary formats, while harder to design for extendibility when using this sort of data, are a lot more compact.

    • Re:The trouble with XML (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Fastolfe ( 1470 )
      I took a look at some of the spec and some of the samples, and you're totally right. There's a lot that can be done here to reduce the complexity of the markup. It seems like they did everything they could to specify every detail of every note every time that note was needed.

      In addition, breaking some of the information out of *this* spec into another namespace (like all of the MIDI-related stuff), as well as using existing namespaces like RDF for meta-data, would go far into simplifying some of this.

      Ma
    • It makes files so absolutely huge. Even something like "A" is a least 14 bytes, whereas in a binary format, it would probably be 2 at most (identifier byte and note byte).

      Just do what OpenOffice did, and ZIP the thing. XML is text, meaning that zipping it up will leave you with a file that may even be smaller than a compareable binary format. Or so I've heard with the OO.o format versus latter .DOC format debates.

      Plus with this approach you can write a simple script to pull information from your XML f

    • ... is that everyone complains about how big it is.

      If you look at the FAQ they note (and I quote) :
      "The two-page Schubert song on our web site takes up 223K in its uncompressed form, but compresses to only 8K using WinZip. This is even smaller than the MIDI representation, which is 9K, and the XML contains much more data about the music."

      Binary formats are nice for speed, but a serious pain to use/document/extend. XML is far easier to extend, there is a growing and powerful toolset available to deal

      • We can have it both ways, if we use a XML format for tools and a more concise format (such as moo2midi) for manual editing, and write a good converter between them. Of course, making the conversion work bidirectionally means some difficulty in designing the text format.
  • will it fall into obscurity like so many document types?

    pcx is hardcore
  • I can't imagine why you'd need "browser support" for this, as opposed to PDF. PDF already does all the proper font embedding, as music notation programs rely heavily on customized fonts. Rendering music is incredibly complex, way more so than text.

    I do my scores [tringali.org] in PDF, if I want people to be able to read and print them. Yeah, the PDF is a bit ugly on screen because of Finale's strange linestroke style, but it prints out just fine. I also use ps2pdf.com, the scores do look much better with Acrobat.

    (

    • Some people want to include bars of music within their markup text. They would like to do both text and scores all in XML.

      Some people want their data stored in an open, free data format that is not locked into just one software program or another. They don't want a MUS or FTF or whatever because 10 years from now, their program might not know what that is. XML will be readable for decades to come.

      Ideally, a commercial score-writing software program could store your data in MusicXML and output, if necess

  • Unfortunate limitations...?! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jester99 ( 23135 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @07:03PM (#8105662) Homepage
    I read both of those links.

    As far as I can tell, the MusicXML license is just a BSD license. Give credit where it's due for the DTD and you can use it wherever you'd like. I really don't see the limitation there...

    Just because it's not GPL doesn't mean it's useless.

  • not all its cracked up to be... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    MusicXML does not really go past very basic score representations. Most modern (i.e. > 20th century) notations are not possible. Its like saving a complex MS word document in .txt format, its mostly useless.
    • Examples? What, pray tell, is so amazingly funky that is done in today's music that isn't supported?

      I only ask because I'm curious.

      • 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, mus

        • Engraving with LilyPond (Score:3, Informative)

          by hanwen ( 8589 )
          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,

          Here is some gregorian chant [lilypond.org], or polymetric stuff [lilypond.org].

          nonstandard key signatures,

          See this example [lilypond.org]

          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 [studver.uu.nl]

        • Re:not all its cracked up to be... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by dirkmuon ( 106108 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @10:44PM (#8108329)
          Meanwhile, if I sit down with Finale, I can have it done in an hour.

          But then you're stuck with Finale's output, which is mind-numbingly uniform and, thus, vastly more difficult to read in performance than Lilypond's more beautiful output. Yes, true. I'm not talking about in pop stuff or other simple music, but in music that is complex enough so that it must be read in performance. John Cage, one of your examples, created music that is inherently difficult to memorize; it is unpredictable enough that it cannot be reduced to pattern or algorithm. (Generally, Crumb and Schwantner, two more of your examples, are not difficult to memorize.) Since there may well be more reading going on in complex music than in simple music, in complex music, like Cage's music, the quality of the score become very important.

          Music engraved by experts is better than Finale output because it is easier to read. Well-engraved music provides all sort of visual cues to help a performer play the correct notes in the correct rhythm, keep his or her place on the page, etc. A sort of visual grammar has evolved over centuries of engraving, and even nexperienced musicians respond to it with hardly a thought.

          The Lilypond programmers seem to have done remarkable work in parsing this grammar and deriving rules, then using the grammar to improve score output. Finale and Lilypond are night and day in terms of ease in reading.

          I am a musician who performs a lot music of the last fifty years--Crumb, Cage, and Schwanter, among many others. I have used Finale regularly since 1989. I tried Lilypond a year ago, and I won't be going back.
    • Fine. If we could go back in time and wipe out all 20th century music, that would be just great. Imagine living in a world where people actually appreciated Beethoven.

      (Okay, we'd want to keep jazz, but you can't really notate that music anyway.)

  • Mozilla Support (Score:3, Interesting)

    by superyooser ( 100462 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @07:21PM (#8105866) Homepage Journal
    On bugzilla.mozilla.org, this is bug 192409.

    Mozilla does not support XML for musicians
    Status Whiteboard: BLOCKED: needs a spec, a comprehensive test suite, and a reason to implement it

    Well, we have a spec now at least. Unfortunately, this bug is dependent on bug 39965 (Layout should permit pluggable support for new frame types), which is currently not assigned to any developer.

  • I did ethnomusicology for a couple of years. I shared the class with final year music students.

    One of the exercises was to listen to some African drum music and write it down in notation.

    I bombed completely, but the dedicated music students wound up producing something reminiscent of Frank Zappa's 'black page drum solo'. It wasn't the 'easy, teenage, New York version' either.

    There are some forms of music that simply cannot be expressed in western music notation and I found that intensive training in this

  • designed for research/librarians - not the public (Score:4, Informative)

    by Daniel_ ( 151484 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @08:18PM (#8106674)

    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:

    • Humdrum Toolkit [ohio-state.edu] - a toolkit used by Stanford, Ohio State, and some other universities
    • Finale [finalemusic.com] one of the first visual score editing programs. Proprietarty format hacked by researchers.
    • Score [scoremus.com] the 800 lb gorilla ofthe market. Music publications use this exclusively.
    • GUIDO [salieri.org] - another notation system developed for and by researchers.

    These are just the standards I know of. This [acadiau.ca] 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.

    • Everybody so far in this thread is missing the archival value of MusicXML -- they criticize it for "re-inventing the wheel," but they're only looking at the value for music composers and consumers.

      The true value of MusicXML is as a universally understood format for describing musical scores digitally. The music libraries of the future aren't going to be made of paper, don't you think?

  • Oh really... (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by i_r_sensitive ( 697893 )

    ...a standard non-binary format for rendering music notation on the web is something that's still sorely needed...

    Really? I'm a composer and performer and I have never felt the lack... This is an advantage for me how?

    Where is this perceived need to render music notation on the web coming from?

    Ultimately, a waste of time. I'm not going to laboriously code up my music into MusicXML format, that's completely insane:

    Is it easier than writing out the music, scanning and posting the scan? Not if I

    • Re:Oh really... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SnatMandu ( 15204 )
      Well, MIDI is nice, but it's just instructions for an instrument. MusicML is desireable because the other formats are either proprietary (and tied to particular composition/editing program like VST), or are weak like MIDI or scanning-handwritten-pages.

      MIDI is bad because it doesn't really tell you anything about how the notation should appear. You could write a pretty smart interpreter that would produce some readable score, but the author loses a lot of control.

      Scanned Scores suck, because they're gene
      • MIDI is bad because it doesn't really tell you anything about how the notation should appear.

        And you ain't just whistlin' Dix... Er, yes, indeed.

        To be more specific: MIDI doesn't tell you what clefs and key signature(s) to use. It can't hold slurs or phrasing, accents, articulations, breath marks, or other note symbols. It has no way to represent repeat marks, first/second/third-time bars, 'da capo', 'dal segno', or 'coda' directions. It can't control note grouping or splitting, stem direction, use o

  • I agree - MIDI is it! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by UrGeek ( 577204 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:47PM (#8107711)
    I will add my voice to the chorus - MIDI is it and this is a solution in search of problem that it will not find. As for the problem of MIDI not being able to record a live performance and produce sheet music - who cares? After working with MIDI for over ten years, the only problem is that it cannot keep up with the nances of a great electric guitarist (SUPRISE - it was a keyboard language!) and only 16 programs and 128 voices. Both can be solved with an upgrade.

    But none of this really matters to web pages! The latest Quicktime synth is awesome if programmer correctly but like most MIDI synths these days, it is in desparate need of some nice expressive electric guitar sounds. Let the engineering go where it is needed, PLEASE!!

    And hey - whatever happened to MPEG-7 Structure Audio anyway???
    • Midi can record live music and play it back.. I've done it with that simple "garage band" application and a midi keyboard.

      Also some of the expensive audio programs do midi to sheet music. logic pro [apple.com] does it (see the sidebar on the right..) and I'm sure there is more.

      • Yes, it can. Work very well for just about any keyboard player on the planet - although some experts at Bosendurfhoer (or however you spell) disagree but their classical ears are so much better than mine.

        And yes, there are MIDI guitars *but* if you faithfully try to all of the nances of say, a Jimmy Page guitar solo, all the pitch bend message messages will flood the sequencer. I have tried this in *ages* (I don't actually own a MIDI guitar) but even if the recorder will keep it, it has got to be a BEAR to
    • As for the problem of MIDI not being able to... produce sheet music - who cares?

      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

  • Well, time to whip out the plastic and buy yet another book for another standard that is going to be used... one day.

  • As a musician.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ericdano ( 113424 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @12:48AM (#8109398) Homepage
    I would not put anything out there as XML. If I'm giving away something I worked on, I make a PDF of it, so then I am SURE what it will look like. Musicians are picky. I'm picky. I like to have my scores/parts/music look good. I'd lose that ability to be sure it is going to look if I put it in XML or whatever format.

    The other thing I would do would be to give the files that I used to create the music. In my case, it's Finale [finalemusic.com]. But, I have YET to do that. I like to retain some sort of credits for doing the work. PDF allows me to do that. And if they want to hear it, creating an MP3 of a score is simple as well.

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