MPEG Symbolic Music Representation: A Solution for Multimedia Music Applications

Abstract

The evolution of digital communication devices and formats has recently produced fundamental changes in the practical approach to music representation and notation, transforming them from a simple visual coding model for sheet music into a composite tool for modelling music in computer and multimedia applications in general. As a consequence, a multi-layer model of music representation is needed for several purposes in addition to sheet music production or visual display, such as audio rendering, entertainment, music analysis, database query, music performance coding, music distance learning, etc. The Symbolic Music Representation is a standard for modelling music notations, proposed inside the MPEG multimedia framework. Symbolic music representation generalizes the main music notation concepts to model the visual aspects of a music score, and audio information or annotations related to the music piece, allowing integration with other audiovisual elements by multimedia references. The Symbolic Music Representation standard overcomes the limitations of a widely accepted format like MIDI, which is in line with its main purpose to model music events whereas it reveals important limitations in producing audio and visual representations with satisfactory results.