09.10.2019 | International Summer School

Methods and tools for annotating music

The ABC of the acoustic world

Slides: https://studiengang-digitale-methodik.pages.gitlab.rlp.net/modul-5/5c/slides/digitalMusicology/annotation/

Frederic von Vlahovits | @digicademy | digicademy | CC-BY 4.0

Overview

1. Annotation & Digital Musicology
2. [Example 1] Audio
3. [Example 2] Image
4. [Example 3] Text
5. [Example 4] Notes
6. Conclusion & Discussion

01

Annotation & Digital Musicology

Areas and Research Fields of Digital Musicology in Examples

• Digital music editions
• Development of software and tools
• Development of markup standards
• OMR (Optical Music Recognition)
• Algorithmic music analysis

01

[Example 1] Audio

Audiofiles

• Storing and archiving audio recordings
• E.g. mp3, wav, ogg
• Example mp3
  • Metadata in ID3 tag
  • Container within a mp3 file
  • No "official" standard

Read/Edit metadata

ExifTool

• "Read, write, and edit meta information!"
• (Batch-)editing of individual and collected files
• Free, platform-independent software
• ExifTool Documentation

ExifTool by Phil Harvey

Exercise 1

Download an mp3 file provided at http://mediathek.slub-dresden.de/. Read the metadata and save it to a CSV file. How do you rate the data quality?

			exiftool FILE
exiftool -csv FILE > FILE.csv
		

02

[Example 2] Image

Source image file

What? Why?

• Performance situations
• Cultural-historical contexts
• Instruments
• Scans of sheet music and texts
• ...

Understand the process of "making music".

Exercise 2

Download an image file provided at https://europeana.eu/. Read out the metadata and correct the title.

			exiftool FILE
exiftool -TAG=VALUE FILE
		

03

[Example 3] Text

Fields of application of text annotation

• Musical material
  • Songtexts / Libretti
  • Performance instructions
• Testimonies
  • Correspondence
  • Diary entries
  • Newspaper articles
• Theoretical texts
• Music as an Object of Cultural Studies

Techniques & Tools

Cf. Session Text and image annotation

• XML, JSON, RDF
• TEI
• Text editors
• Editonframeworks

04

[Example 4] Sheet music

Music engraving (Print)

• In research and for musical practice
• Free and commercial software
• E.g. Lilypond, Sibelius, Finale
• LaTex package MusiXTex

Frescobaldi Lilypond Music and text editor. Picture: lilypond.org

Music presentation on the web

• Image display vs. "on the fly" generated content
• Software library for graphical display of sheet music on the Web: Verovio
• Basics for note display: Coding
• Website Virtual Research Network Edirom

Screenshot Website beethovens-werkstatt.de

Encoding Standards

• XML
  • MEI
  • musicXML
• Plaintext
  • ABC
  • Plaine and Easie Code
  • Parsons-Code

MEI

• Standard for critical music editions (analogous to TEI for text)
• Documentation and introduction:
  music-encoding.org
• MEISE Editor for MEI
• Main objective: Digital Edition (e.g. Freischütz Digital)

Exercise 3

Clone the git repository provided under https://github.com/vonvlaho/iss-sample. Find the 3 errors in sample.mei and correct them. Check the result in Verovio MEI Viewer.

			git clone https://github.com/vonvlaho/iss-sample
		

Plaine and Easie

• 1964 developed as simple letter notation
• Library standard for the transcription of incipits
• Supervised by IAML (International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres) and RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales)

			%G-2$bB@3/8 8AAA/6.''C3'B4G/8GGG/6.B3A4F/
		

Exercise 4

Open veilchen.mei and navigate to incipCode tag. Replace the Parsons code with a Plaine & Easie transcription. Refer to the Plaine and Easie Documentation and the Verovio Plaine & Easie Editor. Also pay attention to note lengths (4,6,8), octave spaces (') and bar ({}).

			%G-2$xF@2/4 4-8-G/
		

05

Conclusion

Music Information Retrieval

“[…] searching for, processing, organizing, and accessing music-related data.” (Schüler: Computer-Assisted Music Analysis, S. 325)

Examples

• Shazam (Audio search)
• IncipitSearch (Sheet music search)
• The Humdrum Toolkit (Sheet music analysis)

Discussion

• What specific challenges do you see regarding the annotation of music?
• What advantages do you see in the annotation and open digital delivery of music?
• What gaps do you notice when looking at the techniques and tools presented?

Literature & Software

Literature

• Musikwissenschaft im Digitalen Zeitalter. Symposium der Virtuellen Fachbibliothek Musikwissenschaft, Göttingen 2012, hrsg. von Judith I. Haug. München, Münster und Berlin: Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Musikwissenschaft 2013
• Johannes Kepper, Laurent Pugin: "Was ist eine Digitale Edition? Versuch einer Positionsbestimmung zum Stand der Musikphilologie im Jahr 2017". Musiktheorie 4 (2017), S. 347–363.
• Nico Schüler: "Computer-Assisted Music Analysis Historical Reflections, Recent Approaches, and Common Methods". Musiktheorie 4 (2017), S. 317–330.
• Music Encoding Initiative
• Dokumentation Plaine & Easie Code
• Edirom Website

Software

• ExifTool by Phil Harvey
• Oxygen
• MEI Score Editor
• MerMEId – Metadata Editor and Repository for MEI Data

Download

• Presentation
• License: CC-BY 4.0, Frederic von Vlahovits