Co-chair Meeting Minutes: September 29, 2020

MusicXML 4.0

Issue #278, which describes the method to include the full score and separate instrumental parts in a single compressed MusicXML file, is complete. The next issue to be tackled will be #279, which caters for having a concert score and transposed parts, and along with it the following additional issues will also be covered: #39, concerning octave transpositions for instruments; #55, for clefs that differ between concert and transposed pitch; plus #54, which describes enharmonic spelling variation between concert and transposed pitch.

Issue #336 concerning the placement of figured bass was also briefly discussed and the co-chairs agreed that it can be included in the scope of MusicXML 4.0.

MNX

Pull request #194, which removes the beamed element from the spec and the MNX by Example page, has been merged. Consequently, issue #193 is also now closed. This means that at present there’s no way of encoding beams in the MNX specification, and defining the specification for beaming is now covered by issue #198, which we will return to in the near future.

The co-chairs discussed the beginnings of how beaming might be encoded and posited the creation of a new rules element that could house document-global rules for how the musical data in the file should be interpreted. Adrian will put together the beginnings of a proposal for how beaming could be defined as a series of rhythmic offsets into a bar (e.g. the positions at which primary beam groups should start and stop, given a nominal bar of notes of a specific duration) and we will discuss further with the community.

Adrian has also removed beaming from the MNX Converter in the short-term, as a reflection of the current state of the MNX specification.

Adrian has also created issues #195, #196 and #197, concerning the remaining ideas that were removed from the MNX specification as part of the work to remove the concept of profiles.

Next meeting

The next co-chair meeting will be on Tuesday 13 October 2020.