- From: capella-software Dr. Dominik Hörnel <d.hoernel@capella-software.com>
- Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2017 09:53:13 +0200
- To: Joe Berkovitz <joe@noteflight.com>
- Cc: public-music-notation@w3.org
- Message-ID: <56d2c747-7d6e-2fe9-b33c-8d211aa66fd4@capella-software.com>
Hello Joe,
first of all thank you for your effort in writing down your notational
ideas as a well-structured specification. I think your proposal is a
very good starting point for the new MNX (or whatever it will be called)
format addressing the MusicXML issues. Here are some remarks:
1. I would like to draw attention to a topic that has not been mentioned
in our ongoing discussion: The concept of measures. Like MusicXML, MNX
requires notes to be grouped into measure parent elements. Measures are
undoubtedly an important element in CWMN and help orientation in the
score, but there is no "musically natural" hierarchical relationship
between measures and notes.
Consider a melody that "fits" into a 4/4 measure grid. Now we shift in
time this melody by let's say a quarter note. It still represents the
same sequence of notes although it has changed the metrical positions of
the notes and we might now need additional ties to keep barlines at the
same points in time.
This has practical consequences: In §5.3 (Musical timelines) you state
that parent elements should be used as containers to organize child
elements, and that it should be easy to alter content of a MNX document.
Most music notation editors perform score editing operations like note
insertion/deletion on measures: For example, inserting a note into a
measure will only affect this measure and leave following measures
unchanged. However some editors (like LilyPond, capella, and partly
Dorico) propagate changes to the following measures. Now if the score is
chunked into measures, inserting a note into the MNX document would
require a lot of restructuring by shifting notes between measures.
One could workaround this by grouping all notes into a single "dummy"
measure, but shouldn't it be possible to do note insertion/deletion in
an almost similar easy manner as you do word insertion/deletion in a
text editor? Should the measure element really be a required element in
the new MNX format?
Reading §5.3.6 (Sequences) a similar question comes up: Why should
sequences be restricted to measures?
I therefore suggest that sequences of notes without measure grouping are
also taken into consideration (by the way, this is how music was notated
in medieval times, although this not the focus of CWNM). It should be
decided whether this alternative way of notation can be applied locally
or must be uniform for the entire MNX document. Obviously this will have
consequences for the notation of barlines and ties we might further discuss.
Here is a possible MNX fragment where barlines will be set automatically
for the entire score:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mnx>
<head>
<identification>
<title>Hot Cross Buns</title>
</identification>
</head>
<score content="cwmn" barlines="automatic">
<system>
<attributes>
<tempo bpm="120/4"/>
<time signature="4/4"/>
</attributes>
<direction placement="above">
<words>With heavy irony</words>
</direction>
</system>
<part>
<part-name>Piano</part-name>
<attributes>
<staves>2</staves>
<clef sign="G" line="2"/>
<clef sign="F" line="4"/>
</attributes>
<sequence staff="1">
<direction>
<dynamics><f/></dynamics>
</direction>
<event value="4"><note pitch="E4"/></event>
<event value="4"><note pitch="D4"/></event>
<event value="2"><note pitch="C4"/></event>
<event value="4"><note pitch="E4"/></event>
<event value="4"><note pitch="D4"/></event>
<event value="2"><note pitch="C4"/></event>
...
</sequence>
<sequence staff="2">
<event value="2*"><rest/></event>
<direction>
<dynamics><p/></dynamics>
</direction>
<event value="4">
<note pitch="C3"/>
<note pitch="E3"/>
<note pitch="G3"/>
</event>
<event value="2*"><rest/></event>
<event value="4">
<note pitch="C3"/>
<note pitch="E3"/>
<note pitch="G3"/>
</event>
...
</sequence>
</part>
</score>
</mnx>
2. Talking about measures I have a question regarding barlines:
According to §5.1.2 (System notations) multiple instances of a notation
should be encoded singly. What is your idea to encode barlines "shared"
by multiple staves?
3. Finally another tiny question regarding CSS: In §6 (Styling) there
is an example with a colored note. How to write the styling of a quarter
note with only the note head colored (stem remains black)? Would you add
a new "note-head-color" attribute or notate the note head as a separate
entity with the color attribute?
Best regards,
Dominik
Am 20.03.2017 um 16:46 schrieb W3C Community Development Team:
> I am pleased to share with you an initial draft of a proposal for MNX. We 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.
>
>
>
> ----------
>
> This post sent on Music Notation Community Group
>
>
>
> 'MNX Proposal now Available'
>
> https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation/2017/03/20/mnx-proposal-now-available/
>
>
>
> Learn more about the Music Notation Community Group:
>
> https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation
>
>
>
--
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Dr. Dominik Hörnel
capella-software AG
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Received on Thursday, 30 March 2017 13:52:00 UTC