Re: The MusicXML-challenge

Hi Christof,

While I cannot speak for Michael, I can helpfully say a few relevant things
that I believe the co-chairs agree on:

- While it's true that the group's charter (
https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation/wiki/Group_Charter) seeks to
"maximize investment by developers in MusicXML", this is not the same as
requiring a new standard to be 100% backwards-compatible. Rather, it
recognizes the fact that the bigger the changes we make, the more work will
fall to existing developers to keep up. (Of course, the best changes would
also *decrease* the workload for *new* developers.) So there is a
recognition that some breaking changes may be necessary for this format to
serve a new, broader set of use cases that go well beyond the original
archival/interchange role of MusicXML.

- As I said to Peter Deutsch, the co-chairs believe it's best to develop
use cases before diving into specific technical changes such as chord or
voice container elements. However, when we get to the appropriate point,
such changes are definitely appropriate to discuss and there won't be any a
priori dismissal on the grounds of compatibility.

Best,

...Joe



.            .       .    .  . ...Joe

*Joe Berkovitz*
President

*Noteflight LLC*
49R Day Street / Somerville, MA 02144 / USA
phone: +1 978 314 6271
www.noteflight.com
"Your music, everywhere"

On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 9:01 AM, Christof Schardt <christof@schardt.info>
wrote:

> Thanks, first, to all contributors and the thoughtful mails.
>
> Michael:
> Do I really understand right, that the new established
> w3c-process implies, that we do not have to consider
> interests of "existing customers and their investments"
> (which in the past often was a stopper to sensful proposals).
> This would be great news and open the possibility of
> substantial improvements and fixes, of which some have
> been mentioned by Peter Deutsch. Great.
>
> From my perspective, I would second two of Peters proposals:
>
> 1) The voice must be a structure with a strongly defined
> meaning and application.
> As of now it has no limits in its application, it could
> be some loose editorial annotation. Or a structure making
> alement.
> Obviously implementors used it according to what a voice
> is in their programs. But this was not mandatory.
> In fact, you are free to present the notes of a bar
> in a messy zig-zag of time and voice, using backup
> and forward elements.
> I never saw a benefit in that freedom. In the last
> consequence it urges the consumer to write an
> compicated analyzer for an unordered sequence of events.
>
> In my opinion, the voice is a building block of music.
> It is a contiguous sequence of events, notes or rests.
> And it should be used in a very strict way.
>
> - a voice starts at bar time 0
> - a voice can only go forward
> - a voice may have gaps (invisible rests)
> - starting another voice implies going back
>   to bar time 0 (full backup).
> All this of cours on a per measure base.
>
> Things like the raindrop-prelude-example can be expressed
> in this way.
>
>
> 2) There is a need for a chord-element as a container for notes.
> Peter presented reasons for this, which needn't be repeated.
> Nad I can't imagine a program, which wouldn't reflect this
> structure in its own data model.
>
>
> A last word regarding contemporary music and its notation:
> A standard without adoption (i.e. broad implementation) is
> useless and therefore wasted time. So better ask the potential
> implementors.
> My answer for example would be: Simply coping with traditional
> western music notation is a task of decades, a lifetime task.
> From this experience and perspective, the idea of developing
> a spec and implemtation for contemporary notations, is totally
> crazy. Of course out of curiousity I once peeked into this domain.
> My conclusion: the common denominator is, that modern composers
> try to coin each ones personal language, both in terms of sound and
> of graphical representation. This is a fundamental contradiction
> to the idea of a common specification. Isn't it?
>
> Regards
> Christof
>
>
>