MusicXML and MIDI

• From: James Ingram <j.ingram@netcologne.de>
• Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 11:10:51 +0200
• To: public-music-notation-contrib@w3.org, Joe Berkovitz <joe@noteflight.com>
• Message-ID: <5704D29B.5060408@netcologne.de>

Hi all,

I have very little experience with the inner workings of MusicXML, so I 
ought to stay out of any detailed discussions about turning it into a 
W3C standard. However, I do have a proposal which I think might help to 
future-proof it.
Maybe this is already implemented.  Maybe it can't be implemented. I 
really don't know.

Proposal:
MusicXML should allow durations to be defined simply as milliseconds.

This would be an alternative to the tempo/beats/divisions timing model 
that comes from the 1981 MIDI standard.

During the recent process of defining the Web MIDI API, they discovered 
that the tempo/beats/divisions model was redundant. So they dropped it 
in favour of just using milliseconds. Browsers have to be very 
economical with their code. And MIDI.org says
> the Web-MIDI API is the most significant advancement of MIDI since… 
> MIDI itself!
Adopting this proposal would allow the authoring tools that use standard 
clefs, staves and chord symbols to migrate gracefully to the more 
flexible timing model -- and still be MusicXML compatible.

Questions: Does MusicXML provide any support for MIDI Continuous 
Controllers? Can it? Should it?

All the best,
James

Received on Wednesday, 6 April 2016 09:11:25 UTC