[Haskell-beginners] data at different stages

[Stephen Tetley]

Hi Dennis

Apologies - sorry about the typos in the last message

I meant "Hi Dennis" - a mix up as I was thinking of David Huron the
Humdrum author.

Also the text should say representing notated music is _tough_
("though" for "tough" gets through the spell check).

Stephen

On 28 January 2012 08:00, Stephen Tetley <stephen.tetley at gmail.com> wrote:
> [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