I know it's common for musicians to have a strong mathematical aptitude (or musicians to have a strong mathematical aptitude) and many of those folks have developed strong computer science skills as well. In fact several folks like that are known to frequent these threads.

One of the things that gets discussed here quite a lot is the various digital representations of music, which platforms and programs can use them plus tools and techniques for translating between the various representations (i.e., ABC, MIDI, MIDI-Text, Finale, WAV, MP3, NoteWorthy Composer, Harmony, etc.) Each representation has strengths and weaknesses but no representation is suitable for all purposes... until now.

I was sitting here thinking of ways to represent music and thinking that an extinsible markup language (XML) document type description (DTD) or XML Schema could be developed that would support a universal representation that could easily be incorporated into any tool and support any need. Well it didn't take me long to realize that if I was thinking in those terms, other people were having those thoughts too and were probably way ahead of me. A quick turn on my trusty WebFerret and viola [sic], sure enough there are several projects under way.

The first one I looked at is the Music Description Language (MDL) DTD proposed by Perry Roland at the University of Virginia. I had a feeling I'd seen that name before and I was right, Perry is also the developer behind The Online Guitar Chord Dictionary.

The next one I found was MusiXML, an effort that seems farther along and has the advantage of being based on the more powerful XML Schema rather than the flawed DTD model. The information on their Web page was somewhat out of date with respect to the specification for XML Schema so I followed their news link and discovered that the project is still quite active. My interest in Finale led me to the Recordare site with lots of information and links relating to MusiXML.

The MusiXML site also points to several other interesting resources including The GUIDO NoteServer capable of performing on-line conversions for several formats. There is also a link to Muscript 2.0 developed by Peter Billam of Hobart, TAS.

A good XML representation for music means that a set of tools can be assembled that permit including a score directly in Mudcat pages and posts without resorting to graphics. The major browsers already understand XML and Java plugins can be developed—may already exist—to let us post, view, listen and share tunes and harmonies on any computing platform hosting an XML-compliant browser and the Java virtual machine.

I know this post will seem arcane to most readers but for the members who understand and see the potential...

Whadduyal think?

      - Mark