Re: Measure-free scores

Hi all,

One of the main ways that MNX differs from MusicXML is in its addition of hierarchy. You can see the rationale for this in the discussion of musical timelines in section 5.3. One of the motivations is to make it easier to manipulate musical content using a document object model.

Moving measures out of the hierarchy in the CWMN profile would work against these MNX goals. We are representing common Western music notation here, and measures are a central concept in that system.

We do want MNX’s CWMN profile to be able to represent multi-metric and non-measured music, just as MusicXML already does. Perhaps we can find a better solution for multi-metric music in particular than what MusicXML offers. But we do not want this to come at the expense of representing the vast majority of Western notated music written and performed not just through 1900, but through 2017.

I believe that we need MNX to maintain MusicXML’s high focus on usability, both for developers and for people reading the XML document and matching it to a printed or displayed score. MNX proposes solutions that aim to increase usability in both areas. Removing measures as a container object would seem to move us in the wrong direction.

Along those lines, I would like to avoid mandates for things that may be impractical for many applications. The “one big measure” approach to unmeasured music seems like it would be the recommended approach for MNX as it is for MusicXML. But if that is not practical for an application to do, I would much rather that an application export multiple measures with hidden barlines that decide not to support MNX at all.

Sometimes MusicXML may have carried this philosophy of avoiding mandates too far, leading to more complexity for most applications. So there is a balancing act involved.

Since I saw references to page and system objects in this discussion, let me reiterate that MNX, like MusicXML, is primarily a semantic format. Pages and systems would be out of place in the MNX CWMN hierarchy as they are expressions of a particular engraving appearance.

Best regards,

Michael Good
VP of MusicXML Technologies
MakeMusic, Inc.

> On Apr 3, 2017, at 7:38 AM, Christof Schardt <christof@schardt.info> wrote:
> 
>>> Joe:
>>> I would add one more point here: measures are tangible objects in the user
>> Jan:
>> It would be really awkward to ignore this real-life concept in MNX.
> 
> +1 !!!
> 
> And last not least don't forget to consider practical aspects:
> inspecting MusicXML-files in xml-editors with hierarchical
> code colding would be a pain, if this structuring element
> would be flattend out.
> 
> The measure-provided correspondence of tree-nodes in an editor
> and sections in a score is an invaluable help.
> 
> I regard measures as a main structuring element of 99.5% of the
> files we have to handle.
> 
> Christof
> 
>