MusicXML Definition
Version 0.7b: July 15, 2003
Overview - What's New - Files - More Information
Overview
"A number of universal file formats are under development that will allow musicians to exchange music over the Internet more easily. In the field of notated music, the most exciting one is MusicXML." - Gino Robair, Electronic Musician, March 2002
Recordare has developed MusicXML technology to create an Internet-friendly method of publishing musical scores, enabling musicians and music fans to get more out of their online music.
MusicXML is a universal translator for common Western musical notation from the 17th century onwards. It is designed as an interchange format for notation, analysis, retrieval, and performance applications. We have tried to learn from the mistakes of past interchange efforts by 1) basing the format on the two strongest academic formats available, MuseData and Humdrum, and 2) testing the format by writing usable software from the beginning. The format is open for use by anyone under a royalty-free license.
Today's MusicXML software can convert between several very different music formats, including Finale, SharpEye, Sibelius, TaBazar, Virtual Composer, and MuseData, and can easily be extended to others. This makes MusicXML the perfect candidate as the industry standard interface in printed music. The Virtual Score, edited by Walter Hewlett and Eleanor Selfridge-Field, contains a chapter on MusicXML.
You are invited to join our MusicXML discussion group to learn more about MusicXML and offer your comments and suggestions.
What's New
MusicXML 0.7b adds support for tempo equivalence metronome marks (e.g., half = quarter). Text is now allowed in an other-direction element.
MusicXML 0.7a added support for lettered tablature, slash notation with and without stems, and the eyeglasses marking.
MusicXML 0.7 added more support for percussion, tablature, and other popular music. These new features now make it possible to export and import Finale files with percussion maps maintaining both appearance and playback. New tablature features include slides, bends, taps, and artificial harmonics. A new measure-style element supports slash notation, measure and beat repeats, and multimeasure rests. Tuplet support is much more complete.
The MusicXML version history provides more details of changes since the initial production release of MusicXML 0.6.
Recordare's Dolet software currently translates between Finale, MusicXML, and MuseData formats, plus one-way translation from Sibelius to MusicXML. If you would like to see MusicXML converters for other file formats, please let us know. If you would like to see converters for other commercial programs, please contact those software companies too.
Files
A MusicXML tutorial for software developers is available in both HTML and PDF format, including a MusicXML FAQ. This is the easiest starting point for learning about MusicXML.
A set of 15 musical examples is available in XML and graphic formats. These include songs for voice and piano, a song for voice and guitar tablature, and some instrumental music. An earlier MusicXML example, "Mut" from Franz Schubert's Winterreise, is also available in several formats, including XML, MIDI, PDF, and Finale files.
If you start doing a MusicXML implementation, you will need to refer to the actual MusicXML document type definitions (DTDs). These are available online, distributed under the MusicXML Document Type Definition Public License 1.02.
All the component DTDs are listed at the MusicXML DTD Index. Most browsers do not display DTDs directly, so you will probably want to look at the HTML versions of these files.
The two main top-level DTDs are partwise.dtd and timewise.dtd. Two XSLT stylesheets (parttime.xsl and timepart.xsl) are provided to convert between the two formats. Multiple movements or other musical collections are represented using opus.dtd. The opus document contains XLinks to individual scores, and will evolve to include more detailed reference and musicological information. There is also a midixml.dtd for representing Standard MIDI Files in XML.
Recordare's Dolet for Finale plug-in translates back and forth between Finale for Windows and MusicXML. A 30-day trial version of this software is available at our download page, along with the MusicXML tutorial and DTDs.
More Information
The following examples and descriptions are also available:
- MusicXML: An Internet-Friendly Format for Sheet Music is available on the XML 2001 Conference Proceedings web site (December 2001).
- MusicXML in Practice: Issues in Translation and Analysis was presented at the MAX 2002 conference on Musical Applications Using XML (September 2002). The slides from the conference presentation are also available in PDF format. The XQuery examples have been updated to reflect the November 15, 2002 working draft.
- Our presentation on MusicXML and MUSICNETWORK from the MUSICNETWORK 2002 workshop is available in PDF format.
- Dr. Joachim Veit from the Carl-Maria-von-Weber-Gesamtausgabe has written a paper on issues surrounding new forms of critical music editions. It discusses a prototype of an electronic critical edition using MusicXML technology from www.edirom.de, developed by Ralf Schnieders. Mediale Revolution? Perspektiven und Probleme neuer Formen der Musikedition is now available online in PDF format (November 2002).
- Nicola Tangari's book, Standard e documenti musicali. I numeri, i modelli, i formati (Standards and musical documents: Numbers, models, formats) includes coverage of MusicXML. It is published by Bibliografica in Milan, ISBN 88-7075-571-1 (2002).
- Stuart Cunningham's MSc dissertation on Music File Formats and Project XEMO (PDF, 1.3 MB) includes sections on NIFF, MIDI, MusicXML, and Csound (2003).
- MusicXML: An Open Format for Music Notation, an overview from our OSCON birds of a feather session, is available in PDF format (July 2002).
- "MusicXML for Notation and Analysis" appears in The Virtual Score: Representation, Retrieval, Restoration. Published jointly by the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities and The MIT Press, it is now available from Amazon and other bookstores (September 2001).
- A simple MusicXML example from the start of a Schumann song is available in HTML and XML versions (November 2000).
- Representing Music Using XML, the abstract to a poster session presented at the International Symposium on Music Information Retrieval (October 2000).
- Using XML for Music Representation, a guest lecture for Stanford's class in Music Representation (May 2000).
To keep updated on MusicXML, you may subscribe to our e-mail announcement list, our MusicXML discussion list, or both. We also welcome your questions and comments about MusicXML at:
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Last updated July 15, 2003.