ms3 1.2.6

A parser for annotated MuseScore 3 files.

ms3 - Parsing MuseScore 3 and 4

Welcome to ms3, a Python library for parsing MuseScore files. It

• parses MuseScore 3 and 4 files, i.e.

  • uncompressed *.mscx files,

  • compressed *.mscz files,

• extracts and processes the information contained in one or many scores in the form of DataFrames:

  • notes (start, duration, pitch etc.) and/or rests,

  • measures (time signature, lengths, repeat structure etc.)

  • labels, such as

    • guitar/Jazz chord labels

    • arbitrary annotation labels

    • expanded harmony labels following the DCML annotation standard

    • cadences (part of the same annotation syntax)

    • form_labels (annotation standard currently in press)

  • chords, that is, onset positions that have musical markup attached, e.g. dynamics, lyrics, slurs, 8va signs…

  • metadata from the respective fields, but also score statistics, such as length, number of notes, etc.

• stores the extracted information in a uniform and interoperable tabular format (*.tsv)

• writes information from tabular *.tsv files into MuseScore files, especially

  • chord and annotation labels

  • metadata

  • header information (title, subtitle, etc.)

  • note coloring

• uses a locally installed or standalone MuseScore executable for

  • batch-converting files to any output format supported by MuseScore (mscz, mscx, mp3, midi, pdf etc.)

  • on-the-fly converting any file that MuseScore can read (including MuseScore 2, cap, capx, midi, and musicxml) to parse it

• offers its functionality via the convenient ms3 commandline interface.

View the full documentation here.

For a demo video (using an old, pre-1.0.0 version) on YouTube, click here

Installation

ms3 requires Python >= 3.10 (type python3 --version to check). Once you have switched to a virtual environment that has Python 3.10 installed you can pip-install the library via one of the two commands:

python3 -m pip install ms3
pip install ms3

If successful, the installation will make the ms3 commands available in your PATH (try by typing ms3).

Quick demo

Parsing a single score

import ms3
score = ms3.Score('musescore_file.mscz')

Parsing a corpus

import ms3
corpus = ms3.Corpus('score_directory')
corpus.parse()

Parsing several corpora

import ms3
corpora = ms3.Parse('my_research_corpora')
corpora.parse()

Acknowledgements

Development of this software tool was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation within the project “Distant Listening – The Development of Harmony over Three Centuries (1700–2000)” (Grant no. 182811). This project is being conducted at the Latour Chair in Digital and Cognitive Musicology, generously funded by Mr. Claude Latour.

The Python package has been set up using PyScaffold 3.2.3.