Re: Music Notation on the Web

 Hi Roger,

> I cannot argue the technicalities of MusicXML capabilities – all I know is
that in practice it’s not doing the job.  So why not?  What is needed to get
that job done?

That's a great question. I tried to answer this before, but let me go into
more detail this time.

Sites like CPDL and IMSLP have historically not hosted MusicXML files
because they are too big, which causes both disk space and bandwidth
problems on those sites.

MusicXML 2.0 solved this problem by introduced compressed MusicXML files
with MIME type application/vnd.recordare.musicxml and a recommended suffix
of .mxl. This zip compression of XML files gets MusicXML file sizes down to
the same basic level as MIDI and other binary file sizes.

This then bumped the problem to both a software and marketing level - not
all products can read and write .mxl files. One of the biggest gaps is that
Sibelius cannot export .mxl files. To address this problem, we are now
building a standalone.mxl / .xml converter program.

We will then need to market to these sites. We might to this via en masse
conversions of all the files in Finale, Sibelius, capella, and other formats
that export MusicXML well, and then upload MusicXML versions back to CPDL.
CPDL already has some MusicXML files available, but those are few and far
between. Similar approaches can be taken with other public domain music
sites.

That's the approach we are taking to increasing the availability of public
domain music in MusicXML format. Increasing the availability of copyrighted
music available in MusicXML format is much more difficult given the
business, social, and artistic issues involved. Any file format like
MusicXML that would meet your needs for being edited would run into the same
set of problems.

Since Recordare is a commercial company, we have been focusing more on
issues related to current, copyrighted music than on the public domain
issue. The public domain issue is coming up often enough nowadays - here and
elsewhere - that it is clear we need to address it soon.

Getting the music displayed and played back in a standard browser, rather
than a plug-in, is another problem. It is dependent on the audio API -
hopefully including MIDI playback - as well as a standard interactive
graphics API with performant implementations on both mobile and desktop
devices.

Again, the problem is not in the music notation representation itself, but
it software and marketing based on the representation. Changing the
representation will slow the process, not accelerate it, unless such changes
are strictly upward compatible.

Best regards,

Michael Good
Recordare LLC
www.recordare.com