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.
Group'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.
Following the conclusion of the consultation phase (see discussion #292), the co-chairs have decided to proceed with the transition of MNX from XML to JSON. The next steps will be to update the docgenerator tool that is used to produce the MNX specification and examples pages to be able to handle JSON, and then to update the documents themselves to show how the new MNX-based syntax will look. Adrian also plans to update the mnxconverter to produce JSON output.
Myke will look at updating the introduction page of the MNX specification to outline some of the specific advantages that using JSON will bring.
MusicXML
There has been some discussion concerning the use of the score-timewise element (see discussion #483) and Myke proposes that in future versions of MusicXML we should deprecate this approach, since it has never been widely used.
A reminder that there is also a proposal on the table to remove the deprecated DTDs in future versions of MusicXML. The DTDs were deprecated in MusicXML 4.0 and Myke proposes that they should be removed in the next update. If you strongly object to this, please let us know in discussion #481.
Next meeting
The next co-chairs’ meeting will be on Tuesday 14 March 2023.
Adrian has taken three existing MNX documents from our suite of examples and has reinterpreted them as JSON as an example of how MNX documents could be encoded as JSON rather than XML. He has also created a simple JSON Schema to act as a proof of concept for how this might work, and his early impressions are that JSON Schema is simple and powerful. These new examples can be found in a new GitHub discussion #292. Feedback from the community is very welcome!
The co-chairs would like to make a final decision concerning the transition to JSON at our next meeting in two weeks. We encourage the community to take a close look at these example documents and JSON Schema and provide feedback as soon as possible.
Next meeting
The next co-chairs’ meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 28 February, 2023.
The main focus for MNX development continues to be the proposal to move MNX from using XML to JSON.
Adrian is working on sample MNX documents in JSON format but doesn’t yet have anything to share; he expects to have some documents ready to share before the next co-chairs’ meeting. He is also continuing to look at the various options for JSON schemas in order to provide validation for those developers who are looking for it.
The co-chairs would also like to remind the community about issue #288, which is still under active review. This issue concerns reworking the accidental attribute for notes to remove redundancy and instead specify whether the accidental should be visible. Adrian proposes to move to a pull request for this issue, unless the community has any further feedback.
Next meeting
The next co-chairs’ meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 14 February 2023.
The co-chairs discussed at length the feedback we have received so far concerning our proposal to adopt JSON as the format for MNX documents in future. We consider the issue still open, and welcome further feedback from the community. Please catch up with the existing discussion in issue #290 and discussion #291, and add your feedback to the discussion thread rather than the issue.
As a next step, Adrian is going to prepare one or two MNX documents in JSON format so that the community can see some concrete examples of how a non-trivial MNX document will look in JSON. We are also going to investigate the different possibilities for JSON schemas, and will create a basic JSON schema to demonstrate validation for MNX documents.
Adrian has also updated the MNX specification to reflect the recent decision to encode sounding pitch rather than written pitch in MNX documents.
MusicXML
Myke is currently investigating the status of the musicxml.org domain, which has been offline for some time.
Next meeting
The next co-chair meeting is scheduled for Wednesday 1 February 2023.
My fellow co-chairs and I have been considering making a fundamental change to MNX: we’d like to use JSON instead of XML.
Read all about it in this new GitHub issue. In it, I outline the rationale and arguments for/against. And after you’ve read it, please leave your feedback!
Given that this would be such a huge change, I wanted to post a quick blog entry here, to cast as wide of a net as possible for potential feedback. I hope you’re as excited about this idea as I am.
This was the final co-chair meeting for Michael (Good), who is leaving his position as co-chair today as he prepares to retire this week. New co-chair Michael Scott Cuthbert has been joining our meetings for the past two or three iterations in any case, so going forward the three co-chairs will be Daniel, Adrian, and Myke.
We thank Michael for all of his contributions to the community group, and of course his broader contributions to the field of music notation over the past two decades. He will be missed, though he will remain a member of the Community Group and we know he is looking forward to contributing to the group’s activities in his retirement.
Meeting at MOLA Conference in Berlin, Friday 2 June 2023
We are pleased to announce that plans are moving ahead for the W3C Music Notation Community Group to hold an in-person meeting on Friday 2 June 2023 as part of a new technology-focused day immediately preceding the 41st Annual MOLA Conference, to be hosted by the Berlin Philharmonic (2–5 June 2023).
The Tech Fair, to be held at the Hanns Eisler School of Music, will be an opportunity for technology-focused presentations, potentially including from organisations and companies that are members of the Community Group. If you would be interested in participating in the Tech Fair, please contact the chair of the MOLA Technology Committee, Mark Fabulich, and Amy Tackitt, MOLA’s Administrator. Mark can be reached at mfabulich at bso dot org, while Amy can be reached at amytackitt at aol dot com (please excuse the simple obfuscation of the email addresses; this is to avoid them being too easily picked up by scrapers and bots).
The current expectation is that the W3C Music Notation Community Group meeting will take place at the conclusion of the Tech Fair schedule, at 3.30pm Berlin time (2.30pm London time, 9.30am New York Time, 6.30am Los Angeles time). We encourage as many CG members as possible to plan to attend in person, but we are also planning to provide online access to the meeting if possible.
More details will be forthcoming in due course.
MNX
The co-chairs have been discussing a significant proposal about which Adrian will provide more information in a separate blog post soon – keep your eyes open for that.
Adrian also reported that he has yet to complete the work on modifying the specification to work through the implications of the change to using sounding pitch rather than written pitch throughout MNX, but is planning to work on this very soon.
MusicXML
Myke has raised issue #478 concerning the measure attribute for the rest element, and what it means for irregular cases such as pick-up bars. Michael provided an initial comment that the intention is that the type element is controlling for what gets displayed, but will look into this a bit further and add a comment to the issue. Any further feedback on this issue from other implementors of MusicXML would be welcome.
Next meeting
The next co-chairs’ meeting will be on Wednesday 18 January 2023.
There has been some good discussion around the proposal for how to represent differences in note spelling between layouts (issue #287), though as yet no winner has emerged. The current front-runner is some variation on Adrian’s proposed Option 2, which encodes the shift from the sounding pitch to the written pitch using a pair of diatonic/chromatic values, and an optional “part-accidental” attribute to specify whether it should be visible independently from the accidental for the unshifted pitch. Adrian will produce some examples using this approach in a pull request for further discussion.
Consensus has at least developed around changing the representation of pitch in MNX to be sounding pitch rather than written pitch, so Adrian proposes making this change to the specification and to the examples (only the octave lines examples would really be affected).
Adrian has written up a proposal for cleaning up the redundancy in the accidental attribute in issue #288, and further community feedback is welcomed.
Next meeting
Due to the forthcoming holiday period, the next co-chairs’ meeting will be on 3 January 2023.
The social media accounts for MusicXML on Twitter and Facebook that have been maintained by Michael on behalf of MakeMusic will be transferred into the stewardship of the W3C Music Notation Community Group, with Myke appointed as the new maintainer of these accounts. These accounts will be handed over to Myke around the time of Michael’s retirement in January.
As a reminder, the W3C Music Notation Community Group also has a YouTube channel where recordings of our in-person and online meetings can be found.
MNX
Issue #287 with the proposal for how transposing instruments and differences in part layouts should be handled is still awaiting community feedback, which would be most welcome!
In the meantime, Adrian has been working on trying out these proposals in the mnxconverter project, including some refactoring on the main branch to prepare for the proposed changes to how pitch is handled in MNX (using sounding pitch instead of written pitch). In conjunction with this, Adrian has also created a new branch (mnx-287) in which he has tried out the importing of MusicMXL files and transposing the pitches in there to sounding pitch using a simple algorithm.
We also discussed the accidental attribute of the note element (see examples here). At the moment, accidental redundantly specifies the type of accidental that is also expressed as part of the micro-syntax for the pitch attribute. After some discussion, we agreed that Adrian should write a proposal for changing the meaning of the accidental attribute to capture whether and how the accidental is shown using a simple enumeration. Adrian will write an issue outlining this proposal in the near future.
Next meeting
The next co-chairs’ meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 6 December 2022.
Michael Scott Cuthbert has agreed to take on the roles of MusicXML spec editor and co-chair of the W3C Music Notation Community Group to succeed Michael, who is retiring at the start of January 2023. Myke joined today’s meeting for the first time. We are delighted to welcome Myke as incoming co-chair and look forward to his contributions to the group’s efforts.
MusicXML
In a previous meeting, the idea was posited that the Dolet plug-in for Sibelius might be transferred into the guardianship of the W3C Music Notation Community Group, but the decision has been made that in due course MakeMusic will release the source code for the plug-in in a public GitHub repository licensed under the MIT License.
MNX
Adrian has created issue #287 to cover the proposal for how to encode instrument transposition. There’s a lot of detail contained in this proposal and we welcome feedback from the community. Adrian’s next step is to try these ideas out in the mnxconverter project with some real MusicXML data to see how it works in practice.
Next meeting
The next co-chairs’ meeting will be on Tuesday 22 November 2022.
MusicXML spec editor and co-chair selection process
The three co-chairs discussed at length the interviews that were held last week with the three excellent candidates to succeed Michael as MusicXML spec editor and Community Group co-chair. Daniel will be contacting the candidates soon to discuss the outcome of the selection process.
MNX
Adrian is still working on the proposal for how differences in enharmonic spelling between concert and transposed pitch scores and parts might be captured (issue #34), and expects to have a proposal ready for review soon.
SMuFL 1.5
Daniel has made some progress on some of the issues in the SMuFL 1.5 milestone (you can review the open pull requests here), and hopes to devote some more time to some of the remaining straightforward issues involving the encoding of new symbols in the coming week.
Next meeting
The next co-chairs’ meeting will be in four weeks, on Tuesday 8 November 2022.
w3c/musicxml
