musicML

>>Michael Hamm wrote:

>>The MUSIC tag can go within BODY, and has no attributes. It contains
the
>>tags STAFF and nothing else. STAFF takes attributes CLEF="bass" or
>>"treble" or "whatever", TIME="3/4" or "6/8" or whatever, and whatever
else
>>is necessary.

>>STAFF is nonempty (though the /STAFF can be implied, as the /TD and
/TR
>>are). STAFF will contain the musical notation. Now, I don't know much
>>about musical notation, so what I'm about to say might actually be
>>ridiculous, but, well, if so, so? Here goes: To make a note sharp or
flat,
>>put a # or b after it. The notes should be in capital letters, with a
    Do you mean that the entire chromatic scale would be individually
represented, i.e. Ab is just another character in the note font btwn G
and A?  How is the octave indicated?  Maybe it'd be better to represent
notes as octave then note.  This is what the MIDI spec does as I
recall.    The tone is the octave/note pair.
>>number indicating the length (4 for a quarter note, 64 for a
sixty-fourth
>>note, 1 for a note, etc.), and a space after it, thus: <MUSIC><STAFF
>>CLEF="soprano" TIME="3/4">A4 B#8 C4</MUSIC>. A rest can be indicated
>>by
>>the string "rest" and the number of notes or the fraction of a note;
thus,
>>"A4 rest/4 B4" is a quarter-note rest between the two notes and "A4
rest4
>>B4" is a four-note-long rest. Or something like that.
I think that a rest should be indicated as octave=0, note=0 because
that's what a rest is.  Indicating the time for each tone is, IMHO far
more complicated.  Especially when considering music of more than a
single voice.

Sorry if this appears as flames, I'm no expert myself.  Just trying to
point out a few things.  I'm excited about the idea and would love to be
involved in some of the drafting.  Also, my impression w/o being very
familiar with the MIDI spec is that is it is that spec which this
musicML should be modelled after.  In other words, I think the detailed
technical work to code up the intricacies of music has already been
handled by those folks, and we might just need to massage it a bit to
have a graphic representation for user agents to interpret.
--
Marty Landman
http://www.catnmoose.com
marty@catnmoose.com

Received on Sunday, 16 August 1998 23:56:27 UTC