An Introduction to MusicXML

Dr David Parsons
David Parsons - May 31st 2013

 MusicXML files are the standard format for
sharing interactive sheet music
 More than 160 applications include MusicXML
support
◦ Including Cubase, Sibelius and Myriad

 “I feel that MIDI is an outdated standard for
music education. I believe that MusicXML is
the proper standard for music education
…import/export with notation accuracy is a
world of hurt with MIDI and much improved
with MusicXML”
 Christopher J. Russell, Ph.D. - Technology in Music
Education Blog, May 2012

 XML
◦ eXtensible Markup Langauge
 XML is
◦ Semi-structured
◦ Self describing
◦ Fundamental to the web, web services, RSS feeds
etc.
◦ Provides a common way for any two applications to
communicate with one another
 XML is a meta language – you can create your
own languages from it

 Elements and attributes
 What do you notice about this data structure?
<element1>
<element2 attribute1=“value”>
some data
</element2>
<element3>
some more data
</element3>
</element1>

 Why can‟t I just use MIDI?
◦ Musical scores need to know about keys
◦ MIDI doesn‟t know if your note is an A# or a B♭
◦ MIDI doesn‟t know about much beyond the notes
themselves
 You can create a MIDI file from MusicXML, or a
notation file

 What do you need to specify if you want to
represent a note like this middle C
semibreve?

 MusicXML includes „note‟ elements
 Nested elements inside this specify the pitch
and the length of the note
<note>
<pitch>
<step>C</step>
<octave>4</octave>
</pitch>
<duration>4</duration>
<type>whole</type>
</note>

the key the clef
 The key is defined
using the circle of
fifths
◦ Zero+major is C Major
 The clef has a sign,
and the stave line it
appears on
<key>
<fifths>0</fifths>
<mode>major</mode>
</key>
<clef>
<sign>G</sign>
<line>2</line>
</clef>

 4/4 time?
 Easy enough
<time>
<beats>4</beats>
<beat-type>4</beat-type>
</time>

 These are typically used for metadata
◦ Not the actual music data, but things that tell us
about it
 Here‟s an example:
◦ Each musical part is given a unique id
 so we can refer to it from other elements
◦ Each measure needs a number
 we are in the first measure of the first part
<part id="P1">
<measure number="1">

 Including stuff we
haven‟t talked
about
 Just for one note,
right?
 Sure, but you don‟t
do this stuff by
hand
 Software reads
and/or writes
MusicXML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE score-partwise PUBLIC "-//Recordare//DTD MusicXML 3.0
Partwise//EN" "http://www.musicxml.org/dtds/partwise.dtd">
<score-partwise version="3.0">
<part-list>
<score-part id="P1">
<part-name>Music</part-name>
</score-part>
</part-list>
<part id="P1">
<measure number="1">
<attributes>
<divisions>1</divisions>
<key>
<fifths>0</fifths>
</key>
<time>
<beats>4</beats>
<beat-type>4</beat-type>
</time>
<clef>
<sign>G</sign>
<line>2</line>
</clef>
</attributes>
<note>
<pitch>
<step>C</step>
<octave>4</octave>
</pitch>
<duration>4</duration>
<type>whole</type>
</note>
</measure>
</part>
</score-partwise>

 Here‟s our file in Myriad Melody Player
 We can see it, and hear it

 Understand how different applications
communicate musical data
 Use MusicXML to transfer data between them
 Write software that can generate MusicXML
◦ so you music can be scored
◦ e.g. write a mobile composition app that streams
MusicXML to the cloud)
 Write software that can read MusicXML
◦ so you can present it how you like
◦ e.g. create sound driven animations in HTML 5

 You could utilise any or all of the following…
 Technologies for processing XML
◦ XPath / XSLT / XQuery
◦ SAX (serial access) parsers
◦ DOM (document object model) parsers
 XML data Streams
◦ File streaming
◦ Web services
 Tools that understand MusicXML
◦ e.g. Java Music Specification Language

An Introduction to MusicXML

More Related Content

Similar to An Introduction to MusicXML

More from David Parsons

Recently uploaded

An Introduction to MusicXML