Music-Notation Searching and Digital Libraries

Donald Byrd

 

Abstract

Almost all work on music information retrieval to date has concentrated on music in the audio and event (normally MIDI) domains. However, music in the form of notation, especially Conventional Music Notation (CMN), is of much interest to musically-trained persons, both amateurs and professionals, and searching CMN has great value for digital music libraries. One obvious reason little has been done on music retrieval in CMN form is the overwhelming complexity of CMN, which requires a very substantial investment in programming before one can even begin studying music IR. This paper reports on work adding music-retrieval capabilities to Nightingale®, an existing professional-level music-notation editor.