News

Thank you to everybody who attended the MusicXML community meeting at Musikmesse! We had at least 42 people present. People came and went during the workshop, so my attendance list probably does not include everyone. We had great discussions, and people enjoyed meeting MusicXML colleagues in person, not just via email and online discussions.

Scorio and the Musikmesse team did a fantastic job behind the scenes. All the logistics worked flawlessly, which is so hard to do. Thanks so much to Scorio for hosting this event!

I have created a consolidated report that combines the feedback received from both the NAMM and Musikmesse MusicXML community meetings this year:

Report from the MusicXML Community Meetings

I have also posted my Musikmesse presentation slides, which are an expanded and updated version of the slides from the NAMM meeting:

Beyond PDF – Exchange and Publish Scores with MusicXML

We have a lot of good ideas collected here, and now have to see how we can prioritize and move forward on them. I look forward to future discussions on the MusicXML mailing list around this topic.

We will be having a MusicXML community meeting at Musikmesse in Frankfurt. This will be a Musikmesse Musikbiz workshop sponsored by Scorio, a Musikmesse exhibitor. It will take place on Friday, April 12 from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm in the Workshop room accessible from Hall 5.1. The information is a bit hard to find on the Musikmesse web site, but you can find it directly here.

Because this is organized as a public meeting at Musikmesse, I will present some background information about MusicXML for those not familiar with the format. However, as at NAMM the two main purposes are to:

• Build the MusicXML community by having people meet face-to-face, not just online.
• Help design the future of the MusicXML format by sharing our visions within the community.

Both these goals were met at NAMM. We had a great mix of publishers and developers attending the workshop there, and we hope for a similar mix at Musikmesse.

I have included the workshop title and summary below. The workshop will be held in English. There will be some introductions in both German and English to help people who show up without realizing the choice of language. I will also be available for individual meetings with MusicXML developers and publishers throughout the entire Musikmesse event from Wednesday, April 10 through Saturday, April 13.

Scorio, the workshop sponsor, would like to be sure they have enough refreshments for everyone who attends. Please email info@scorio.com if you plan to attend this Musikmesse workshop. We look forward to seeing you in Frankfurt!

Title: Beyond PDF – Exchange and Publish Scores with MusicXML

Summary:

MusicXML was invented by Michael Good in 2000, and developed collaboratively by a community of hundreds of musicians and software developers over the past 13 years. Now established as the standard open format for digital sheet music, it moves music from desktop notation applications such as Finale and Sibelius to a new generation of mobile and web-based customers for notated music. Today MusicXML is supported by over 160 applications on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android.

Designed as a music-specific notation format, MusicXML adds further value to digital scores compared to a purely graphical format like PDF. It allows a full range of interactive functionalities for musicians like automatic transposition, part extraction, or score annotation. Michael Good will present the latest MusicXML innovations from the past year. We invite musicians, software developers and publishers to design the future of MusicXML with us in this workshop.

Please note that the workshop will be held in English.

Today MakeMusic announced it will be acquired by LaunchEquity, the company’s long-time largest shareholder. Read the full press release.

Welcome to the newly designed MusicXML and MakeMusic sites! We now have our MusicXML information here on the musicxml.com site.

In addition to the new appearance, we also have a new web site architecture that will let us update the site more quickly than we have over the past year. The easiest way to contact us is via the MusicXML mailing list. We’re especially interested in hearing about new software that you are building that supports the MusicXML format. We will be able to have much faster turnaround on our MusicXML software page. The same is true for new MusicXML digital sheet music sites listed on our music page.

Thank you again for your continued support of the MusicXML format over the years. We now have support from 165 applications, and look forward to seeing even more and higher quality support in the future.

Thanks so much to everyone who attended the first MusicXML community meeting at NAMM and made it a success! We had 16 people attending with a great mix of music publishers and software developers. There was lots of good feedback on future directions for the MusicXML format, and some good connections made between developers and publishers who had not talked together before. We plan to prepare a meeting summary and post it on this site.

Several people asked if we could have a similar MusicXML meeting at Musikmesse. This meeting is still in the planning process with the Musikmesse staff. We hope to have something to announce later in February. Musikmesse takes place on April 10 to 13 in Frankfurt, and Michael will be available for meetings all four days.

I will also be attending SF Music Tech in San Francisco on February 19. Perhaps we can have another notation lunch if there are enough other notation people attending?