JGuido Library: Real-Time Score Notation from Raw MIDI Inputs

This paper describes tools designed and experiments conducted in the context of MIROR, a European project investigating adaptive systems for early childhood music education based on the paradigm of reflexive interaction. In MIROR, music notation is used as the trace of both the user and the system activity, produced from MIDI instruments. The task of displaying such raw MIDI inputs and outputs is difficult as no a priori information is known concerning the underlying tempo or metrical structure. We describe here a completely automatic processing chain from the raw MIDI input to a fully-fledge music notation. The low level music description is first converted in a score level description and then automatically rendered as a graphic score. The whole process is operating in real-time. The paper describes the various conversion steps and issues, including extensions to support score annotations. The process is validated using about 30,000 musical sequences gathered from MIROR experiments and made available for public use.