A framework for distributed semantic annotation of musical score: "Take it to the bridge!"

Conference item

Music notation expresses performance instructions in a way commonly understood by musicians, but printed paper parts are limited to encodings of static, a priori knowledge. In this paper we present a platform for multi-way communication between collaborating musicians through the dynamic modification of digital parts: the Music Encoding and Linked Data (MELD) framework for distributed real-time annotation of digital music scores. MELD users and software agents create semantic annotations of music concepts and relationships, which are associated with musical structure specified by the Music Encoding Initiative schema (MEI). Annotations are expressed in RDF, allowing alternative music vocabularies (e.g., popular vs. classical music structures) to be applied. The same underlying framework retrieves, distributes, and processes information that addresses semantically distinguishable music elements. Further knowledge is incorporated from external sources through the use of Linked Data. The RDF is also used to match annotation types and contexts to rendering actions which display the annotations upon the digital score. Here, we present a MELD implementation and deployment which augments the digital music scores used by musicians in a group performance, collaboratively changing the sequence within and between pieces in a set list.

Authors: Weigl, DM; Page, KR

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: International Society for Music Information Retrieval
• Host title: Proceedings of the 18th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference
• Pages: 221-228
• Publication date: 2017-10-01
• Acceptance date: 2017-07-14
• Event location: Suzhou, China
• Event website: https://ismir2017.smcnus.org/
• Event start date: 2017-10-23
• Event end date: 2017-10-27
• DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1415894
• ISBN: 9789811151798
• Language: English