Co-chairs meeting minutes – December 2, 2025

MusicXML

We discussed the candidates for the MusicXML specification editor position, and both the depth and quality of commitment of this community to MusicXML impressed us and warmed our spirits. The co-chairs will be contacting candidates in due course to discuss next steps.

MNX

We continued to discuss tempo markings (issue #113) following our discussion in the previous co-chairs meeting. We decided that swing or rhythmic feel markings, despite often being displayed in line with tempo markings, or sometimes in place of them, are sufficiently different from tempo marks as to be encoded using a separate object, which we will return to in future.

After much discussion, we arrived at a proposal for a minimal representation of tempo: a label, defined as a simple string; and the tempo value, defined as a note value unit and a numeric value, both of which are optional. We’ll assume that consuming applications will be able to construct a default displayed appearance for the tempo item using either or both of these values. To make it possible to specify precisely how the tempo should be displayed, we propose adding an optional rich text object, which can define the displayed appearance. We propose extending the formatted text item to define references to other objects, so it’s possible to reference the label and tempo value data in order to avoid redundantly encoding the same values in two places.

We welcome feedback on this proposal, which you can read here.

Next meeting

The next co-chairs meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 16 December 2025.