Jack Campin wrote:
>Now we have a couple of tools under development for interconverting
>between XML and ABC. Is XML in its present state any better than ABC
>at handling microtonal modality? If so, does its approach put any
>constraints on what ABC's syntax and semantics for this ought to be?
Currently MusicXML is heavily oriented toward western classical music.
However, as it's name suggests it is highly extensible. Each note
can carry two separate representations of pitch - one which tells you
where to place it on the staff, which staff, what musical symbol to
use, how to draw the flags if it's in a beam, which way up to draw
the stem and so on, in as much detail as you want, and the other which
gives it's midi pitch and duration in divisions of a quarter note.
The two representations can differ from one another, so you could
combine strict musical notation with a sound which swings.
The sound representation is independent of the key signature, as
black notes contain an <alter> element to specify sharp or flat.
I'm not sure whether <alter> elements have to be integers, or whether
you can use decimal values to specify microtones. I haven't seen
any examples of the latter.
Here's an Ab:
<note>
<pitch>
<step>A</step>
<alter>-1</alter>
<octave>4</octave>
</pitch>
<duration>8</duration>
<voice>1</voice>
<type>eighth</type>
<stem>up</stem>
</note>
It could have information about beams, slurs, ties, tuplets, ornaments,
lyrics etc. embedded in it, and could go on for a page or so just
representing one note. The result is a gigantic and utterly unreadable
file, which is nevertheless remarkably easy to parse.
It's never going to replace abc on the newsgroups, as it's a dead loss
for human-to-human communication, but it's an excellent way of transferring
complex polyphonic music between programs.
To answer your immediate question - no, MusicXML doesn't place any
constraints (or supply any suggestions) as to how we might represent
microtonal music in abc, except perhaps as an example of what the
effect on readability is of setting out to represent absolutely
everything!
Phil Taylor
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