[Haskell-beginners] data at different stages

[Stephen Tetley]

[Disclaimer - this response is a bit cheeky, but it may help save you
some frustration down the line...]

Hi David

Do you have a concrete need for MusicXML? e.g. is it the only export
format your preferred music program (Sibelius or whatever) supports?

If you don't, but you are thinking about MusicXML because it looks
like a "standard" you might want to reconsider. MusicXML really is a
hideous format - representing notated music is though, western notated
music enjoyed a thousand years of development before the invention of
computers so it added many tricks that don't fit in well with syntax
trees. MusicXML is a so-so attempt at a syntax representation.

Personally I much prefer David Huron's Humdrum which represents just
enough information for the task in hand, and it is a "meta-format" so
what you can represent is flexible (extensible). If you want to use
Humdrum in Haskell you would need to write you own parser - not a
difficult task as the Humdrum format is simple and uniform.

Best wishes

Stephen