GUIDO Annotated Bibliography

GUIDO Annotated Bibliography with Hyperlinks
Rebecca Fiebrink
Created 20 January 2005

Bainbridge, David. 2002. Towards a Workbench for Symbolic Music Information Retrieval. Paper presented at the Workshop on the Creation of Standardized Test Collections, Tasks, and Metrics for Music Information Retrieval (MIR) and Music Digital Library (MDL) Evaluation, July 18, http://www.music-ir.org/evaluation/wp1/wp1_bainbridge.pdf (accessed 20 January 2005).

This white paper proposes a Java workbench environment for symbolic music information retrieval which can be used by researchers and digital music libraries. The proposed workbench would support separate bodies of researchers working with distributed workbench copies on distinct corpora, a unified body of MIR researchers operating on one established corpus for more consistent algorithm evaluation, and/or a query-by-content service within a digital music library setting. Most notably, XML GUIDO provides the canonical data format underlying the system. The system does not appear to have undergone significant development or implementation since the writing of this paper.

This website offers an extensive list of music notation formats in use (or used historically). In addition to offering links to general information on musical notation formats, it provides brief summaries of each format and information about conversion between formats.

The GUIDO Music Notation Format Homepage offers links GUIDO news and announcements, the GUIDO NoteServer, GUIDO implementations, GUIDO documentation, GUIDO demos, the GUIDO mailing list, a German press archive, and general information about GUIDO. The documentation is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in learning about GUIDO. The site itself does not appear to be frequently updated, though.

The GUIDOLib project continues the work on graphical rendering of symbolic music data begun with the NoteViewer project. This collaborative effort between the MidiShare group at GRAME and the SALIERI group at Darmstadt University of Technology aims to develop a "generic, portable library and API for the graphical rendering of musical scores." The SourceForge site (referenced below) provides more information about this project.

The NoteServer is an open source project that converts GUIDO format to GIF or PostScript graphical renderings of the corresponding musical notation. GUIDO symbols can be entered in as text, on a keyboard-type Java Applet interface, or as a query string. The NoteServer notation may be embedded on web pages. This site offers some helpful examples of corresponding GUIDO and graphical notation, and it is a useful tool for anyone wishing to learn or verify their understanding of the GUIDO representation.

Hoos, Holger H. and Keith Hamel. 1997. The GUIDO Music Notation Format – Specification Part 1; Technical Report TI 20/97. Darmstadt University of Technology, http://www.salieri.org/GUIDO/docu/spec1.pdf (accessed 20 January 2005).

This is the definitive handbook on Basic GUIDO syntax and usage. Written for the new GUIDO user, it includes a list of standard tags and plenty of examples. Advanced and Extended GUIDO are not covered.

Hoos, Holger H., Keith A. Hamel, Kai Renz, Jurgen Kilian. 1998. The GUIDO Notation Format: A Novel Approach for Adequately Representing Score-Level Music. Presented at the International Computer Music Conference, October 1-6, http://www.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/AFS/CM/SALIERI/papers/icmc98-gmn.pdf (accessed 20 January 2005).

This is the original paper introducing GUIDO to the world as a general purpose music representation format. It offers a concise guide to the Basic GUIDO format as well as a rationale behind its development and an enumeration of possible uses. This paper is recommended for anyone wondering whether GUIDO might be useful in their work, and it complements the specification (referenced above) for new users desiring to understand the representation.

Hoos, Holger H., Keith A. Hamel, and Kai Renz. 1999. Using Advanced GUIDO as a Notation Interchange Format. Presented at the International Computer Music Conference, October 22-28, http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hoos/Publ/icmc99.pdf (accessed 20 January 2005).

This paper is a kind of sequel to the original paper on basic GUIDO presented at ICMC 1998 (referenced above). By outlining the features of Advanced GUIDO, the authors make a case for GUIDO as a suitable representation format underlying systems necessitating the exact reproduction of musical scores (in terms of notational information as well as formatting details).

Hoos, Holger H., Jurgen Kilian, Kai Renz, and Thomas Helbich. 1998. Salieri: A General, Interactive Computer Music System. Presented at the International Computer Music Conference, October 1-6, http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/hoos/Publ/icmc98a.pdf (accessed 20 January 2005).

Presented at the same ICMC as the paper introducing Basic GUIDO, this paper outlines the SALIERI music language framework in which the GUIDO representation was originally conceived. SALIERI is "a universal programming language based on a hierarchical model of formal music representation, combining features of traditional functional and procedural programming languages with powerful concepts for manipulating musical material." While this paper is interesting reading for those interested in learning more about GUIDO's history or about music programming languages in general, understanding the SALIERI system and language is not requisite for working with the GUIDO representation itself.

Hoos, H., K. Renz, and M. Gorg. 2001. GUIDO/MIR: An experimental musical information retrieval system based on guido music notation. Presented at the International Symposium on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR), October 15-17, http://ismir2001.ismir.net/pdf/hoos.pdf (accessed 20 January 2005).

GUIDO/MIR is a simple database offering content-based retrieval of symbolic musical data. The data is represented in GUIDO, and GUIDO/XML is introduced as an encapsulation of GUIDO in an XML structure as a means to allow integration with XML tools. This paper presents the authors' experience with a demo database system containing around 150 files. The development of the system since 2001 is unclear, and the WWW address given in the paper for the system is no longer valid.

Kilian, Jurgen and Holger H. Hoos. 2004. MusicBLAST – Gapped sequence alignment for MIR. Poster presented at the International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR), http://www.iua.upf.es/mtg/ismir2004/review/abstract.php?idPaper=229 (accessed 20 January 2005).

MusicBLAST is an algorithm based on BLAST, a popular approach to similarity searching on biological data. MusicBLAST offers approximate pattern matching for melodic and rhythmic similarity. It can find incomplete and imperfect occurrences of a pattern. The underlying representation for the system outlined here may be MIDI or GUIDO.

Renz, Kai and Holger H. Hoos. 1998. A WEB-based Approach to Music Notation using GUIDO. Presented at the International Computer Music Conference, October 1-6, http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/hoos/Publ/icmc98c.pdf (accessed 20 January 2005).

This paper is another in the triad of GUIDO-related papers presented at ICMC 1998, and it introduces the GUIDO NoteServer. It offers a concise description of the NoteServer's purpose and implementation structure. See the NoteServer website (referenced above) for more information.

The SALIERI project encompasses both the SALIERI system and language (see the ICMC 1998 paper referenced above) and the GUIDO project. This website links to SALIERI news and announcements, the SALIERI system and language homepage, the GUIDO homepage, publications by project group members, the history of SALIERI, and several related sites in German. Parts of this site seem to be out of date.

This page houses the SourceForge portal to the GUIDOLib project, including downloads, bug tracking, public forums, and a link to the CVS repository. There is current development activity happening here (as of 20 January 2005), and this page is recommended over the GUIDOLib page referenced above for its up-to-date state.