Aspects of Music Representation in HyTime/SMDL

Abstract

In 1986, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) authorized a working group, X3V1.8M, to study the development of a standard for the computer representation of musical information. As with any ANSI work, the ensuing project was open to public participation, in this case, by hundreds of attendees and contributors. The work of this group has led to two related standards: Hypermedia/Time-based Structuring Language (HyTime) (Newcomb, Kipp, and Newcomb 1991) and Standard Music Description Language (SMDL). To explain briefly what will be covered in detail below, HyTime is a standard for scheduling and addressing in any medium, music or otherwise, while SMDL covers those aspects specific to music. ANSI, being the U. S. representative in the International Standards Organization (ISO), has proposed both HyTime and SMDL as ISO standards. HyTime has been approved and will shortly be published with the number ISO/IEC IS 10744:1992. SMDL is still in the committee draft stage and has been given the number ISO/IEC CD 10743. There has been much vigorous debate in the computer music community over the work of X3V1.8M. Some have argued that there are de facto standards already in use, obviating the need for a new language. Others have debated the design chosen by the ANSI committee. Still others do not believe that the music community will enjoy more benefit than harm from having a standard at this point in time. These points of view can best be seen in the various contributions about music representation and standards in the Proceedings of the 1989 International Computer Music Conference (Dannenberg et al. 1989). This debate has been useful during the committee's development of HyTime and SMDL. Given such widely divergent views, it is unlikely that any work would satisfy everyone. I hope some questions about these standards will be answered in this article, and Aspects of Music Representation in HyTime/SMDL