The Music Notation Community Group develops and maintains format and language specifications for notated music used by web, desktop, and mobile applications. The group aims to serve a broad range of users engaging in music-related activities involving notation, and will document these use cases.
The Community Group documents, maintains and updates the MusicXML and SMuFL (Standard Music Font Layout) specifications. The goals are to evolve the specifications to handle a broader set of use cases and technologies, including use of music notation on the web, while maximizing the existing investment in implementations of the existing MusicXML and SMuFL specifications.
The group is developing a new specification to embody this broader set of use cases and technologies, under the working title of MNX. The group is proposing the development of an additional new specification to provide a standard, machine-readable source of musical instrument data.
w3c/smuflGroup's public email, repo and wiki activity over time
Note: Community Groups are proposed and run by the community. Although W3C hosts these
conversations, the groups do not necessarily represent the views of the W3C Membership or staff.
With Musikmesse cancelled for 2020, we will move our annual meeting of the W3C Music Notation Community Group online this year. The meeting is scheduled for Thursday, 30 April at 2:00 pm UTC. This will be 7:00 am in San Francisco, 10:00 am in New York, 3:00 pm in London, 4:00 pm in Frankfurt, and 11:00 pm in Tokyo.
As usual we will plan for the meeting to last for 2 hours to allow plenty of time for discussion. The agenda will include:
MusicXML 3.2 kickoff
SMuFL update
MNX update
We will conduct the meeting using Zoom, the conferencing tool that we have used regularly for several years at MakeMusic. Zoom includes a feature to record meetings, so the meeting should be available afterwards for those who cannot attend live.
Please indicate your availability for the meeting by completing the signup form. It is possible that we may reschedule the meeting if we find that a large number of people cannot make the proposed date and time. Once you have signed up, we will send you a calendar invitation that includes the link to the meeting ID.
Thank you for joining us at this meeting from the safety of your own homes. We hope that all of you stay healthy in the midst of the current pandemic, and look forward to the time when we can meet in person once again.
Following the cancellation of Musikmesse 2020, we have now tentatively scheduled the virtual Community Group meeting for Thursday 30 April 2020 at 2pm UTC (3pm London / 4pm Berlin / 10am New York / 7am Los Angeles). The meeting will be held via Zoom.
If you are unable to attend at the chosen time, you can indicate another time that would be more convenient for you (though we will only consider rescheduling the meeting if a large number of attendees cannot make the original time). The meeting will be recorded and it will be possible to watch it again on demand after the event.
MusicXML 3.2 update
Michael has added a new issue #302 concerning a potential extension for piano pedaling without a specific end point. The co-chairs agreed that this should come into scope for MusicXML 3.2.
MNX-Common
Adrian has added a new section on rhythm (augmentation) dots to the MNX-Common by Example page. Adrian also had to take care of a small travis-ci issue related to the deployment of the MNX-Common by Example page.
Adrian has also created issue #174 concerning how repeat barlines and repeat endings should be encoded in MNX-Common. The co-chairs welcome feedback from the community about the proposed approach: Adrian has posed a number of specific questions and we welcome feedback on thos issues and any others arising.
Next meeting
The next co-chair meeting will be on Tuesday 14 April 2020.
Following the cancellation of Musikmesse 2020 due to the ongoing novel coronavirus outbreak, the co-chairs are actively looking into technological solutions for holding a virtual community group meeting. We anticipate that the meeting will take place a few weeks later than originally scheduled, possibly on Thursday 16 April 2020 at 5pm Berlin, 4pm London, 11am New York, 8am Los Angeles, and the co-chairs will provide more information on schedule and how to participate as soon as possible.
The topics for discussion at the meeting are planned to include a kick-off discussion for MusicXML 3.2, and status updates for SMuFL and the MNX-Common effort.
Next meeting
The next co-chair meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 31 March 2020.
Updated March 17: Messe Frankfurt has announced that Musikmesse 2020 is cancelled rather than postponed, and that the new dates for Musikmesse 2021 will be announced soon.
Today Messe Frankfurt announced that Musikmesse 2020 is postponed. No replacement dates have been announced yet. Thus we will not be having our meeting on 3 April 2020 as planned. We will provide further updates as we learn more.
The co-chairs discussed the potential agenda for the meeting. Michael proposes that the meeting could serve as the formal kick-off for the MusicXML 3.2 project, discussing both specific issues that are in scope, and whether or not the project should follow the same approach as MusicXML 3.1, i.e. to avoid introducing changes for structural issues being addressed in MNX-Common. Adrian will also provide an update on the MNX-Common project.
Daniel will unfortunately be unable to attend, because his employer Steinberg has instituted precautionary restrictions on business travel that will prevent him from traveling to Germany for Musikmesse. However, at the time of writing, both Michael and Adrian expect to be in attendance, unless Musikmesse itself is cancelled or postponed.
Messe Frankfurt has posted an advisory on its web site expressing its confidence that it has the necessary precautions in place to protect the safety of those in attendance.
The co-chairs will continue to closely monitor the situation and will update the community group if and when there is any further information provided by Messe Frankfurt.
Please let us know whether or not you plan to attend by filling out the Musikmesse meeting sign-up form. You may change your response after filling out the form as needed. This will help us in planning for the meeting.
Next meeting
The co-chairs will next meet on Tuesday 17 March 2020.
Updated on 4 March 2020: Today Messe Frankfurt announced that Musikmesse 2020 is postponed. No replacement dates have been announced yet. Thus we will not be having our meeting on 3 April 2020. We will provide further updates as we learn more.
We are pleased to announce that we will have a face-to-face meeting of the W3C Music Notation Community Group at the Musikmesse in Frankfurt. We look forward to this event each year as we usually have 30 music notation experts participating in the discussions.
This year’s meeting will be Friday, 3 April 2020 from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm in the Extrakt meeting room in Hall 3, Level C. This returns to the date we have used before when Musikmesse runs from Wednesday through Saturday.
As in past years, we plan to have a 2-hour meeting followed by a 1-hour reception. We will update this post with a more detailed agenda after our co-chair meeting on 3 March.
Our proposed agenda for this meeting includes a kickoff for the MusicXML 3.2 project. This would include a discussion of scope, proposed issues, timeline, and relationship to the ongoing work in MNX-Common. We will also provide an update on the MNX-Common project, where Adrian has some exciting news in store.
Note that the COVID-19 disease may cause Musikmesse to be postponed or cancelled this year. Messe Frankfurt has posted an advisory on its web site. Musikmesse is currently scheduled to take place as planned, but things are changing fast. We will keep you posted with any updates.
Please let us know whether or not you plan to attend by filling out the Musikmesse meeting sign-up form. You may change your response after filling out the form as needed. This will help us in planning for the meeting.
We are still waiting for confirmation from the Musikmesse organisers about the meeting schedule and venue. We will continue to chase the organisers!
MNX-Common
Adrian has not yet found the time to work on the dynamics examples for the MNX-Common by Example page as discussed in the previous co-chair meeting, but will be working on this in the near future.
Adrian next plans to add tuplets to the MNX-Common by Example page. The co-chairs had a brief discussion about the necessity to support both nested tuplets and tuplets crossing barlines. Nested tuplets are accommodated by the current specification since tuplets are contained within sequences, so having multiple levels of nested tuplet does not violate the measure-sequence-tuplet hierarchy. However, tuplets crossing barlines present more of a challenge, since a tuplet element cannot, as currently specified, exist in two sequences. Partial tuplets – as used by Boulez, Adès, et al – pose a different encoding challenge.
For the time being, the co-chairs have elected to consider only complete tuplets that are fully contained within a single measure, and Adrian will develop some examples to validate the current specification.
Next meeting
The next co-chair meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 3 March 2020.
Michael has submitted an enquiry to the Musikmesse organisers about the arrangements for our planned Community Group meeting for the show but as yet there is no news. We will provide an update as soon as we get one from Messe Frankfurt.
MNX-Common
Based on a suggestion from Bob Hamblok, the MNX-Common by Example page has been updated to encode the XML tags in a way that avoids unsightly URL-encoding, which helps make the source (and therefore the diffs) more readable.
In the last co-chair meeting, we discussed the possibility of reworking the proposed elements for dynamics (currently consisting of dynamics, wedge, cresc and dim) to a single dynamics element with different child elements to describe the different kinds of instantaneous and gradually-changing dynamics. Adrian has put some time into this, but has found few concrete advantages to this approach beyond the syntactic sugar it would provide; since dynamics are already contained within a directions element they can already be grouped reasonably effectively. As such, the co-chairs agreed that we should not pursue this idea any further for the time being, and instead Adrian will focus on producing some examples based on the current specification for the MNX-Common by Example page.
We discussed expanding the allowed values for the dynamics element to include a greater variety of dynamics like sfz or fp that represent a dynamic change immediately following the attack of the note, and proposed that we might add a separator to the microsyntax so that dynamics like mf-ff or mp-p can also be encoded. Note that this would not cater for cases where different dynamics should be played on different passes through the music in a repeat structure; we briefly discussed this aspect and agreed that a higher-level concept of some kind (perhaps based on the existing time-only attribute in MusicXML, or perhaps a new element that could be used to wrap elements that should only apply on a particular pass through the music) would be necessary for this.
We also agreed that subito could be encoded by way of a new attribute for the dynamics element, and Adrian will consider how this might be done.
Next meeting
The next co-chair meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 18 February 2020.
Michael attended the NAMM Show in Anaheim, California between January 16 and January 19. Eleven people attended the W3C Music Notation Community Group dinner on the Friday evening at Thai Nakorn in Garden Grove, and a good time was had by all.
MIDI 2.0 is in the process of being ratified by the MIDI Manufacturers’ Association, and it is expected to be officially announced in the near future. Michael reports that the proposed successor to the Standard MIDI File format, currently called SM2F, could potentially include some notation representation in some way. Michael agreed to work on this and in particular to try to understand the use cases that could be covered by including notation information in a Standard MIDI File.
Music Engraving in the 21st Century Conference
Daniel attended the Music Engraving in the 21st Century conference at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria on Friday 17 and Saturday 18 January. The conference programme was very interesting, with presentations spanning business and collaboration issues, technical papers (for example, on the use of blockchain as an alternative to traditional copyright, or the application of machine learning techniques to a variety of music notation and engraving problems), round-table discussions, and hands-on sessions exploring technologies and products, including MusicXML, LilyPond, Frescobaldi, and Dorico.
Frankfurt Musikmesse 2020
Michael is going to contact the organisers of Musikmesse to arrange a time and venue for our regular W3C Music Notation Community Group meeting. In descending order of preference, we are trying to organise for the afternoon of Friday 3 April, Thursday 2 April, or Wednesday 1 April. More details will be forthcoming soon.
As always, we are interested to hear from any company who would be willing to sponsor the drinks reception following the meeting. Companies who sponsor the meeting are given some time on the agenda to promote their products and services, and are featured in the publicity leading up to the event. If you are interested in sponsoring this year’s reception, please contact Michael directly.
He has also completed work on pull request #169, concerning slurs as liaison-content, and this has now been merged into the main specification and MNX-Common by Example page, closing issue #167.
Next, Adrian is going to concentrate on fleshing out a couple more simple notations on the MNX-Common by example page, and then prepare a proposal for the encoding of dynamics for community discussion.
Next meeting
The next meeting will be on Tuesday 4 February 2020.
Adrian reported that pull request #169 for converting slurs to liaison-content is now ready to go. The most recent changes provide two new examples on the MNX-Common by Example page for slurs on specific notes within a chord, and one for incomplete slurs. Adrian asked Michael how incomplete slurs are represented in MusicXML, and Michael replied that the current solution in MusicXML is purely graphical and doesn’t have a semantic component. Adrian will update the incomplete slurs example with this information as soon as possible and then update the pull request one more time.
Adrian will next add examples for key signatures and accidentals to the MNX-Common by Example page.
The co-chairs took a quick review through the issues in Active Review and discussed what we would like to work on next. There was a good discussion about gradual and absolute dynamics and Adrian will prepare an issue for some community discussion in the near future.
Dinner at The NAMM Show 2020
Michael has organized a dinner at NAMM for W3C Music Notation Community Group members and guests who wish to attend. The dinner will be held at Thai Nakorn in Garden Grove on Friday, January 17, at 7:30 pm. If you plan to attend, please fill out the sign-up form so we can reserve enough space.
Music Engraving in the 21st Century Conference
Daniel will be attending the new Music Engraving in the 21st Century conference in Salzburg on 17–18 January and will provide a report to the co-chairs in the next meeting.
Next meeting
The next meeting of the co-chairs is scheduled for Tuesday 21 January 2020.
w3c/smufl
