Re: MNX Proposal Overview

My responses to MNX Use Cases

3.1.6. MC5
"A wishes to separate these annotations from C's original score" - This is
just a use case that I especially like.

3.1.10. MC9.
There appears to be some typos here. The text says "... from text
associated with a single part ( <line break> prformance instructions for a
single instrument)." I think it should say "... from text associated with a
single part (performance instructions for a single instrument)." without
line break.

3.1.14. MC13.
"Composer of a multimedia work wants to write a score that synchronises
sound and vision." Stylistically, I think this should say "sound and
visuals", but that is just my personal preference.

3.2.2. MT1
Paragraph 3 says "As opposed to standard music edition UI...". I think the
word "edition" should be replaced with the word "editor", which would then
read "As opposed to standard music editor UI...".

3.2.3. MT2
Paragraph 2 ends in ellipses. I think a period is sufficient.

3.3.10. MP10.
The first paragraph ends "... one example is \ORDL". I think this should be
"... one example is ORDL", without the \ mark.

3.4.9. RLP9.
There appears to be another typo here. The heading ends "... where the
musical form is not present in a standard <line break> rpresentation PF is
playing...". I think this should read "... where the musical form is not
present in a standard representation). <line break> PF is playing...". This
would fix the misspelling of "representation", close the parenthetical
clause, and move the line break to the appropriate place.

3.4.14. RLP14.
The repeated use of the phrase "It's common" sounds too informal. No
suggestion for a replacement, but the phrase appears three consecutive
times.

3.5.4. ARL4.
Second sentence is a run-on. I think it should read like this:
"Nonetheless, the work has demonstrable unity and M wants to encode these
in a single digital document. For example, M is transcribing...". I don't
understand what the phrase "... single digital document, not M is
transcribing..." currently in the text.

Stylistically, the last sentence may include a comma: "In some cases, the
pitch..." instead of the current "In some cases the pitch...".

3.6.3. ED3.
I don't understand the first sentence "S wants to change tempo and tune
(transpose) and to play a difficult part in a loop". I don't understand how
tune and transpose relate in this context. It also implies that S wants to
perform all three actions. My suggested edit would be "S wants to change
tempo to play a difficult part in a loop.".

4.
"Editor want to discard performer annotations from digital sheet music" - I
feel this could also apply to PF or other roles as well.

"At what point does the orchestrator ever need to work with a digital
encoding of the notation..." - I think that having a digital encoding of
the notation (quantized) in addition to the composers MIDI data from the
sequencer would simplify the job of the orchestrator. Currently,
orchestrators that are given MIDI data from sequencers must load the MIDI
data into a notation program and spend a lot of time cleaning up the data
before they can begin orchestrating. This is a particular pain point for me
personally, as I frequently compose in a DAW and then transcribe the
notation in notation program.

"Composer wants to generate sheet music in real-time for live performance"
- See Google's Magenta real-time MIDI interface for an example of this use
case. (Disclaimer, I wrote some code for Magenta).

On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 8:31 PM, Jeremy Sawruk <jeremy.sawruk@gmail.com>
wrote:

> My responses to Proposal Overview:
>
> 4.3.2.
> (2^n) - 1 numerators: I think I am missing something here? Why wouldn't
> this just be odd? How would you encode something like a 5:4 tuplet? 5 isn't
> of the form (2^n) - 1, so is it disallowed? I read the section on Metrical
> timespans (4.3.3.), so maybe I am not understanding why numerators and
> denominators are needed in 4.3.2.
>
> "Also, a pure rational number does not maps cleanly..." should say "Also,
> a pure rational number does not map cleanly...". (map instead of maps).
> Editorially, I think the word "pure" in this sentence is unnecessary, as a
> number is either rational or not. There should also be verbiage that these
> numbers must be positive.
>
> 4.3.3.
> Shouldn't "3/8*" mean "three dotted eighth notes"? It currently says
> "three dotted quarter notes".
>
> 5.1. CSS and style properties
> "For example a stylesheet might include a .note selector specifying the
> default appearance of all notes." should say "For example, a stylesheet
> might include a note selector...". Having the selector .note only applies
> to elements where class="note", while the selector note applies to all
> <note> elements. The comma is just a style suggestion.
>
> 5.3. External stylesheets
> Does it make sense to use the .css file extension? Because the proposal is
> using units that are not standard within CSS, it might make sense to use a
> different file extension. If CSS permits custom units, then there is no
> problem, but I didn't think it did. A possible alternative extension might
> be .mss, for either "music style sheet" or "MNX style sheet".
>
> 5.4. Units
> There is a unit "staff lines", but not a unit "staff space". Are these the
> same thing? To me, a staff line is the thickness of a staff line, while a
> staff space is the distance between two staff lines. Just curious as to
> what "staff lines" means in this section.
>
> 5.6. Media queries and parts
> Suggestion: Replace the <media-name> element with an optional
> media-name="" attribute on the <part> element. This can then be reused the
> same way a class="" attribute can be. It feels a lot like a class-type
> attribute rather than a separate element to me, but that's just my opinion.
>
> 6.4. Performance events and event streams
> No comment other than I really like this approach. The rgb() analogy is
> perfect. I think this also makes it easy to convert MNX to MIDI or other
> playback engines.
>
> On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 8:39 AM, Joe Berkovitz <joe@noteflight.com> wrote:
>
>> Good morning all,
>>
>> I am pleased to share with you an initial draft of a proposal for MNX.
>> The co-chairs hope this will be a useful starting point for the next
>> revision of this group's music notation standard. We look forward to
>> fruitful discussions on this list, as well as in person in Frankfurt for
>> those who are able to join us in April.
>>
>> This has been a long time in preparation -- far too long, I am sure --
>> and I have little by way of excuse, even accounting for the unrelated work
>> on my plate. However, this pause in output has at least given me the chance
>> to think about the ideas presented here.
>>
>> The phrase "starting point" is appropriate, as this document is still in
>> a formative state. While some of the solutions may survive to a later stage
>> of work, right now its purpose is to stimulate discussion by placing
>> something concrete in front of us to examine and debate. Indeed, the
>> co-chairs are not agreed on every element of the proposal, and much less
>> would we expect agreement from the community group at large.
>>
>> To that end, the document also seeks to capture conflicting points of
>> view and alternate possibilities, which are noted as issues called out
>> within the proposal. Rather than using specification language, the proposal
>> relies on examples, to better allow experimentation with various answers to
>> problems.
>>
>> You can find this document at:
>>
>> https://w3c.github.io/mnx/overview/
>>
>> The use cases formerly on the wiki have also been moved from the wiki, to
>> better track their concordance with the emerging description of MNX:
>>
>> https://w3c.github.io/mnx/use-cases/
>>
>> After an initial round of mailing list discussion, we will later move to
>> using Github issues to track various points. The github repo is at
>> https://github.com/w3c/mnx/ for version control details.
>>
>> For now, the chairs look forward to some vigorous and positive exchanges
>> of views on the public-music-notation-contrib@w3.org list! Please do use
>> this contributor list for all discussion, in order to affirm that your
>> contributions conform to the W3C IP policy.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> .            .       .    .  . ...Joe
>>
>> Joe Berkovitz
>> Founder
>> Noteflight LLC
>>
>> 49R Day Street
>> Somerville MA 02144
>> USA
>>
>> "Bring music to life"
>> www.noteflight.com
>>
>
>