Uses in Music Education
Several uses of MusicXML are currently active and others are under development in software for music education. Accompaniment systems, which help performers practice their parts by hearing the rest of the music in the piece, offer an apt example of those in use. MusicXML files can be read into version 2 of the capella playAlong program, which then produces an accompaniment CD that contains the score minus your part. Similarly, MusicXML files can be read into Finale in order to produce SmartMusic files. SmartMusic can track you as you play into a microphone attached to the computer, following your tempo changes, cadenzas, and fermatas.
Initiatives involving MusicXML are under development with a cluster of European educational programs that are associated with the Vemus tools made available by GRAME (Lyons, France). Collaborators are located in Greece, Sweden, Lithuania, Roumania, and Estonia, as well as France and Belgium. Another MusicXML program, MusicAlign, is in preliminary development in Belgium by Joachim Ganseman.
Several projects are investigating the possible use of MusicXML to produce music in the different dialects of Braille used in the USA and Europe (Encelle, 2003; Kahlisch, Leopold, and Waldvogel, 2004; McCann and Milani, 2003). The KlavarScript program translates from MusicXML into Klavar notation or Klavarscribo, a format invented in the Netherlands in 1931 to provide an easier way to read music.
