mscz format specification

• Nov 12, 2010 - 13:51

I would like to know what the format is for the mscz file. I will be writing software that will create this file for my specific application.

Chris


Comments

The format is not documented for the moment. It's often smarter to use MusicXML since MuseScore (and 100 other applications) can read MusicXML files. Check http://musicxml.org
Moreover, MuseScore format will change while MusicXML is established as standard.

In reply to by Mr_Ada

What do you mean by sequences?
MusicXML is based on part and measures and not really on tracks like MIDI can be. That's why MusicXML is suitable for music notation and MIDI for performance. One way to learn it could be to put some music in MuseScore and save as MusicXML. You can open the resulting file with any text editor.
You can find a full specification of the format on Recordare website together with an handy alphabetical index of the elements and attributes.

In reply to by [DELETED] 5

I meant patterns. There are set patterns on how to generate certain things. I could generate XML files from MusicXML, but I didn't want to have to do this the hard way. Recordate doesn't provide in the information in one area and one has to go through web page after web page trying to figure things out. I was hoping for one file with a simplistic description of these patterns.

In reply to by [DELETED] 5

You are correct! It is snippets that I want and I'd program a way to fill in the data. I'll take libraries. Doesn't matter the language as I program in Ada and I can interface with anything.

My project is simple. I create an ascii file which represents a piece of music that I am trying to convert to midi. In the interim I'd like to have a notational program for printing which can also play the midi (musescore in this situation). I use AnvilStudio but it doesn't meet my needs. So I use Musescore for proofreading and checkout before I import the midi file to ableton live so that I can assign sample music to each track.

chris

In reply to by [DELETED] 5

Yes it does. Everything is measure based, each measure containing the necessary identification of notes and dynamics. I don't worry about beams at the moment as my goal is the generate a MIDI file to insert into Ableton Live. I tried to get help from Ableton for their format but they turned their noses up to me. I could have written code to have better dynamics control on my midi files. The purpose of using XML at all is to facilitate sheet much generation. Either for distribution or for my edification. My format is very much similar to Lilypond's but much simpler because I intended it to be very fast to generate by hand.

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