Introduction
Latest Steps

January 2019: first kickoff meeting

In the framework of the International Workshop on Multilayer Music Representation and Processing (MMRP19), held in Milano, Italy on 24-25 January 2019, the organizing committee has organized 3 panels dealing with IEEE 1599, focusing on: 1. History, Technical Notes, Demos; 2. Goals of the New PAR WG_1599; 3. Structure of the Working Group, Draft of Workplan.
As a consequence of the discussion, which involved a worldwide audience of experts and scholars, the constitution of 5 sub-working groups has emerged as the most suitable way to structure the global activities of the WG.
The program of the workshop and panels' minutes are available at the ▸workshop Web site.

March 2018: a New Recommended Practice

Scope

This recommended practice specifies a standard language for comprehensive music representation. The language provides a meta-representation of music information within a multilayered environment, which achieves integration among general (metadata), structural, notational, computer-driven performance, and audio layers. The recommended practice integrates music representation with already defined and commonly accepted standards and formats. The recommended practice provides both an interchange format among different applications and an aggregator for heterogeneous music related contents. The standard addresses software dealing with music information, e.g., digital score editors, optical music recognition (OMR) systems, web and mobile apps, musical databases and archives, and performance, composition and musicology-oriented applications.

Purpose

Ten years after the release of the IEEE Std 1599, technology has evolved and other similar initiatives have appeared. During this period, both requests for improvement in the definition of the standard and new needs emerged. This extends the representation possibilities offered by the original standard.

The recommended practice generalizes the organization of the document into layers, letting the user define the description layers. In this way, such a recommended practice will provide support to representation domains that are currently unpredictable, overcoming the original rigid 6-layer structure. A generalization of the Logic layer allows support and integration of current formats with future music-notation formats.

This recommended practice provides a way to link and organize external media materials (giving, e.g., the possibility to keep together different audio tracks referring to a single multi-track recording sessions). A suitable file format to deliver both the extended mark-up language (XML) representation and the external media files within a unique archive is recommended.

Another important advancement in this revision is the integration of Digital Rights Management representation within the IEEE 1599 multilayer asset.