RE: The MusicXML challenge

Dennis, et al, 

I understand the frustration of not seeing new/recent music notation practices covered. 

Ignoring this (as I indeed strongly propose) does not imply a judgement on value of what has been done. Some seem to interpret it like that, but that is not the case. 

The whole problem is that it is not feasible to include it. Neither practical, nor economical. 

Just take a look at the current notation programs: none support the constructs that you deem necessary. The reason for that is simply that they are not common enough. You might see them on an everyday basis, but if I show the references you quote to musicians, virtually no one is familiar with them. There is no "customer base" for this that makes it worthwhile to implement it in a program. 

You probably hope that including such constructs in a standard, will require all notation programs to implement all the aspects of the standard. I guarantee you that will not happen. Instead, they will either support a subset of the standard, or just walk away from the standard as a whole. And what do we gain by that? 

For similar reasons, making an extensible standard as Sienna Wood proposes makes also no sense.  If only some programs implement the extensions, then it is as good (or bad...) as if no one implements it. The key driving force behind MusicXML should be interoperability between programs. Interop fails for those elements that are optional, leaving only the core as useful. So why even spend time defining optional elements if it brings no improvement in practice? 

I certainly hope that we are defining a standard that is useful in practice and benefits a large audience, not just something that is nice from a more academic point of view. 

With kind regards, 

JanR














> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dennis Bathory-Kitsz [mailto:bathory@maltedmedia.com]
> Sent: maandag 9 november 2015 17:42
> To: public-music-notation-contrib@w3.org
> Subject: RE: The MusicXML challenge
> 
> On Fri, November 6, 2015 5:44 am, Jan Rosseel wrote:
> > But let me state it not-so-friendly, but clear: if MusicXML must
> > succeed as a format for storage and exchange, we can only cover the
> "normal" music.
> > Normal meaning: music being notated in well-defined ways. Ways that
> > are standard already outside of MusicXML and that are directly
> > understood by the vast majority of musicians. Something should only be
> > considered for adding to MusicXML when it is already a standard way of
> > notating things with pen and paper in a significant part of the musical
> society.
> 
> I entirely disagree with this philosophy. This statement seeks to ignore over a
> half-century of existing notational practices (practices that, for composers
> and experienced practitioners of music past 1950, are "normal").
> 
> If a regressive approach is taken in creating a standard, then the composers
> and performers who actually drive notational development will simply and
> properly walk away. Being exiled from the standard, they will ignore it
> (including the 'good bits') and continue with their individual approaches.
> 
> Certainly a standards group gets to cherry-pick which elements to include,
> but its resulting partial 'standard' will correctly be ignored by those who
> actually engage in current practice (including graphical notation, sonification,
> algorithmic notation, etc.).
> 
> Standards are necessarily prescriptive. But before they can do that, they
> must be sufficiently descriptive -- identifying what was *and is* in use. Just
> because such identification and description are difficult does not mean these
> elements may be safely ignored for the sake of convenience.
> 
> (I refer again to "Notations", "Notation in New Music", "Notations21" and
> "SoundVisions" as starting points.)
> 
> Dennis
> 
> 
> 
>

Received on Monday, 9 November 2015 17:11:05 UTC