Re: MusicXML Clefs

Good morning, everyone.

My company (TimeWarp Technologies) has found the flexible positioning of clefs in MusicXML to be extremely important. I’ll provide 2 examples.

We have an iPad app called SuperScore Music. SuperScore files are built on MusicXML data, and the app presents the scores in a liquid fashion: When you resize the music or change the orientation of the iPad, SuperScore re-engraves the music on the fly, thus providing a custom layout for the current situation.

SuperScore files typically offer MIDI playback. Rather than read the primitive playback data in the MusicXML file, we combine data from a MIDI file that was beautifully edited with the score data in the MusicXML file, associating the notes in the display with the notes in the MIDI file. 

Thus, it is important for us to understand the pitches accurately that are represented in the MusicXML file. We also use that association for real-time score-following when the user is performing on a MIDI instrument.

Here are 2 examples of the ways in which we have used non-standard clefs (that is, non-standard from a contemporary perspective):

1. Early Music
In this past year we published the famous Solfeggio in C Minor for keyboard by C.P.E. Bach. We consider the publication to be an interactive urtext edition.

Based on Bach’s original publication, we notated the score as a modern keyboard player would expect, using treble and bass clefs. In order to be true to the urtext concept, we provided a second version of the score using the soprano clef (middle C on the bottom line) as did Bach. (This was common practice at the time.)

2. Contemporary Pedagogical Piano Music
It is quite common for contemporary piano methods to teach the reading of music in an incremental manner. First, pieces are presented without lines and spaces (typically played on black keys) with a focus on teaching the concepts of up and down.

Little by little, these methods introduce the concepts of lines and spaces, starting with just one line plus the spaces above and below, then 2 lines, etc. Without showing a clef, these simple pieces generally use an alphabetical letter from A to G, placed to the left of the staff, to designate the first note of the piece (which can be on a line or a space). In this manner, these methods introduce the meaning of a clef and eventually replace the specific letters of G and F with the standard clefs.

Notating these pedagogical pieces using a typical notation app is a real challenge, involving hidden barlines, hidden clefs, hidden time signatures, staves of 1, 2, 3, and 4 lines, etc. With the typical notation program, you have to stand on your head in order to get the correct look for print. In our case, we need to export accurate MusicXML data to render these scores in SuperScore.

In my experience, getting the right visual look for these scores is often facilitated by using hidden clefs that are placed on non-standard lines. The result is a score that looks correct for pedagogical purposes and is correctly notated as far as pitch definitions are concerned, thus making possible the association with the MIDI playback and score-following data.

George

George F. Litterst
TimeWarp Technologies


> On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 4:47 AM Albert Hart <alhart369@gmail.com <mailto:alhart369@gmail.com>> wrote:
> Re: https://github.com/w3c/musicxml/issues/316#issuecomment-631558362 <https://github.com/w3c/musicxml/issues/316#issuecomment-631558362>
> "You might be better off asking questions like this on our mailing list <https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-music-notation/> instead of GitHub. We try to reserve GitHub issues for ideas and bug reports as opposed to user support questions."
> 
> I posted this because it sounded like a "bug" to me, that the musicXML format allows note and line in <clef> definition, and allows offsetting the octave, but does not say what octave to use.
> 
> If MuscXML only supports clefs by name - G, F, C, etc. - why does it include the "line" attribute. Are their "G" clefs which have the G on a different line. Is there is a clef like G/5 instead of G/2?
> 
> -- 
> Al
> 
> 
> -- 
> James Tauber
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