Representing and Linking Music Performance Data with Score Information

Abstract

This paper argues for the need to develop a representation for music performance data that is linked with corresponding score information at the note, beat, and measure levels. Building on the results of a survey of music scholars about their music performance data encoding needs, we propose best-practices for encoding perceptually relevant descriptors of the timing, pitch, loudness, and timbral aspects of performance. We are specifically interested in using descriptors that are sufficiently generalized that multiple performances of the same piece can be directly compared with one another. This paper also proposes a specific representation for encoding performance data and presents prototypes of this representation in both Humdrum and Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) formats.