Fwd: Call for Chapter Proposal: Structuring Music through Markup Language: Designs and Architectures

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

In case anyone of the GDP feels in urgent need of more writing...


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jacques Steyn <address@hidden>
Date: Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 6:55 AM
Subject: Call for Chapter Proposal: Structuring Music through Markup
Language: Designs and Architectures
To: address@hidden


Dear Han-Wen

This email serves as a personal invitation to you as expert in a
discipline related to Musicology and Music Informatics.

You are cordially invite you to consider contributing your expertise
to a forthcoming book edited by Jacques Steyn, entitled Structuring
Music through Markup Language: Designs and Architectures.

Questions about the nature of music have been asked from different
perspectives: from the point of view of Systematic Musicology, or from
the point of view of Cultural Musicology. Systematic Musicology, or
Scientific Musicology, investigates music from the perspective of the
physics of sound, acoustics, cognitive sciences, physiology,
neurosciences, computing and technology. Systematic Musicology focuses
on music in general. Cultural Musicology focuses on hermeneutic,
phenomenological and mystic interpretations of music. Music
Informatics and computer technology provide a different perspective on
the nature of music than offered by intellectual paradigms of earlier
eras. Music Informatics focuses on the information structure of music.
Developing an XML-based language for music, that needs to result in
practically working systems, requires both an epistemological and
ontological description of music. In this context, Music Informatics
brings together Systematic Musicology and Cultural Musicology, two
approaches which lacked constructive discussion in the past.

In the past, most approaches to music from a computing perspective
have focused on using the computer as a tool for performance,
archiving, and recording. The World Wide Web and particularly markup
languages, such as XML, offer a whole new set of tools not only for
practical implementations, but also for a new investigation into the
theory of music. The rigour of an XML language serves as a conceptual
tool to ask penetrating questions about the nature of music. This book
investigates music from both a systematic and cultural musicological
point of view, and the effect of such a view on the design of a markup
language of music.

A general and universal approach to music is a high level abstraction
from which cultural variations derive. To make possible the universal
exchange of different cultural expressions of music by means of
computing technologies, this high level abstraction needs to be
described along ontological lines. The outcome of such an
investigation provides a framework within which to design and develop
an XML-based language that makes translation possible between
different cultural music systems. Such an approach should also assist
in the development of a culture-neutral descriptive markup language
that could be used to express symbolic music representation that is
not biased toward Common Western Music Notation. Several XML-based
languages for music are available. Most focus on Common Western Music
Notation, which is only one particular cultural manifestation of
music, and more specifically only one particular writing system of
music.

This book takes the physics of music and acoustics as point of
departure for the development of an XML-based music markup language,
rather than Common Western Music Notation, which is regarded merely as
a specific writing system for a specific cultural expression of music.
Yet, while developing basic music concepts on physics, the cultural
aspect is factored into the design process.

OBJECTIVE OF THE BOOK

This book will be the first publication in the field of Music
Informatics and will provide a framework for the design and
development of an XML-based general music markup language. Designing
an XML-based language depends on ontological questions, which in turn
depend on the philosophical paradigm of how music is defined – an
epistemological question. The approach followed in this book is an
attempt to combine the highly technical matter of an XML-based
language for computing with philosophical musicological issues.
Systematic Musicology is often positivistic, while cultural musicology
is often hermeneutic, phenomenological and mystic. This book attempts
to bridge the gap by using philosophical concepts for the design of a
computer markup language.

The themes to be addressed in this book will be of value to scholarly
theory as well as music application developers. The Symbolic Music
Representation (SMR) initiative provided input into an ISO/MPEG
extension for MPEG4 for music representation. Although this initiative
did address cross-cultural music notations, it was on a very high
level, and lacks details for implementation. That initiative also only
focused on written music, and did not touch on the multitude of
general music concepts that are also important for the description of
music to be used in computer use for music. This limited scope needs
to be extended.

One particular outcome of this book will be to provide an
understanding of music in general, on ontologies of music that may be
used to develop XML-based languages for music. There is currently no
book addressing this.

TARGET AUDIENCE

The target audience will be both musicologists and developers of music
for computers as well as those interested in Music Informatics. For
scholars the value will be initiating debate between Systematic
Musicology and Cultural Musicology, while for application builders the
value will be a practical framework of music ontology that could be
used as basis to develop products. This should enable any web builder
(from hobbyists to software corporations) to build music applications
within the context of the Web.

RECOMMENDED TOPICS

You are invited to contribute a chapter on one (or more) of the
following themes:

Defining music

The physics of music

The ontology of music

The nature of music: duration, frequency

Cultural music systems – eg. tuning systems, scales, etc.

Orthographic music systems - characteristics

Common Western Music Notation: brief history, basic concepts and purpose

Descriptive music and computers – eg. how to handle the intrinsic
events and objects of music, as oppose to the extrinsic aspects
currently handled by applications

Mapping ontology to a markup language – requirements, guidelines, principles

A general, universal music markup language

The way forward

Appendix: Present XML-based music applications.
* Origin of the application language – history
* Purpose of the language – the music domain addressed
* Particular approach followed mapping music to XML – the ontological model

You are most welcome to submit other possible themes for our consideration.

Contributions will be double-blind peer reviewed.

HOW TO SUBMIT

To submit your chapter proposal, please use the web form at:

http://www.musicmarkup.info/

WEB ADDRESS

http://www.musicmarkup.info/

DEADLINES

30 September 2008 Proposal submissions

30 October 2008 Proposal acceptance/rejection notification to authors

28 February 2009 Chapter submission deadline

30 April 2009 Review results to authors

30 May 2009 Revised chapters due from authors

31 July 2009 Final acceptance/rejection

PUBLISHER

This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global
(www.igi-global.com) under their Information Science Reference imprint
in 2010.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to
contact me. We appreciate your consideration of this invitation and
hope to hear from you soon!

Best wishes,

Jacques Steyn (PhD)

School of Information Technology

Monash South Africa

+27-11-950-4132 Phone

+27-11-950-4033 Fax

jacquezzteyn Skype

address@hidden




-- 
Han-Wen Nienhuys - address@hidden - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen