Re: The MusicXML challenge and Chords - MusicXML is Excellent!

> ...snip...
> 
> No, no - stop a while. Remember this: MusicXML is good. It is more than good. When I make a MusicXML file using
> Musescore or Finale and later plays it with my player for Midi and MusicXML, I have one MusicXML-file.
> The same file can be played and be shown graphically in different programs and I can edit it. I can make new songs, 
> I can listen to existing song, select my voice and practice using the player. 
> 
> MusicXML works excellent combining playing and showing the notes. Midi has the problem showing the graphics,
> PDF cannot be played. MusicXML combines and simplifies working with music. And  while I am working with music I 
> do not need to bother about of the implementation details and problems I once had programming the player. I can not in
> any way feel that MusicXML has more focus on graphic than playing - the player just plays as if MusicXML was just
> build for that et vice versa.

This is exactly what I'm saying, but I was going one step further. I was reacting to the call for building an "unambiguous" way of representing music notation. In my opinion, this is not possible. Music notation is inherently ambiguous. If you want to make it unambiguous you need to choose which direction you want to go: If you want to build a printable representation, a better option is to use SVG or Postscript. Or, if you want an unambiguous timing model, use MIDI or OSC.

Within MEI, we've recently been considering the following example (provided by Don Byrd), and specifically the lower staff:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xlme3hbvp1cl9jn/Chopin_RaindDropPrelude_MultidurChords.png?dl=0

Semantically, a half-note in a beamed relationship with others and taking the same amount of (visual) time as an 1/8th note challenges several "rules" about the behaviour of music. You *could* encode this as an 1/8 note with a half-note notehead, but that then skews the representation towards the visual. In other words, a performer would interpret this as a half-note held over the underlying 1/8 notes, but encoding it as simply a visual change does not then represent this accurately to a performing representation like MIDI. A semantic representation would need the flexibility to allow a half-note within a beam, and more importantly, would need to accurately record a full duration of a 1/2 note in this context even though that would take up more "time" than it actually does.

-Andrew

> 
> If we can improve MusicXML - that is fine, but for a user (musician) the current issues does not exist. 
> 
> Kind Regards
> Mogens
> 
> 
>

Received on Monday, 26 October 2015 18:31:10 UTC