OpenScore - by MuseScore and IMSLP Open-sourcing music with open source software
Channel: FOSDEM
Date: 11/03/2018

by Peter Jonas

At: FOSDEM 2017

OpenScore is a new initiative to liberate public domain music using MuseScore,the leading open-source music notation program. The aim is to uniteMuseScore’s millions of users in an effort to digitise and liberate the worksof Mozart, Beethoven and other famous classical composers. OpenScore extendsthe principles of open source to apply not only to software, but also to thecontent produced by the software, thereby opening up a new avenue of fundingfor open source software development.

The goal of OpenScore is to improve access to public domain music. The projectis a collaboration between MuseScore, the leading open-source music notationprogram, and IMSLP, the largest online archive of public domain music.

The IMSLP archive contains scanned copies of scores by Mozart, Beethoven andother classical composers in “binary” PDF format, which allows musicians toread them, but not edit or listen to them. OpenScore will unlock the truepotential of the scores by making the actual “source code” to the musicavailable in MuseScore’s text-based format, which allows listening, editing,and easy conversion to other formats like MusicXML, MIDI and PDF, as well asall audio, video and image formats. Text-based scores offer improvedaccessibility over PDFs, and are easily parseable by software tools to allowsearching, indexing, data mining, and analysis for research purposes.

To make this happen, OpenScore will adopt the open source model and draw uponthe strength of MuseScore’s massive online community. The digital scores willbe published under a Creative Commons license to allow anyone to adapt, shareand improve upon the transcriptions.

OpenScore partners: MuseScore, IMSLP, RNIB, St Andrews, music21, NicholasRougeux


Room: H.2215 (Ferrer)
Scheduled start: 2017-02-04 15:20:00