Using Advanced GUIDO as a Notation Interchange Format

GUIDO Music Notation is a new music representation format based on the notion of representational adequacy, i.e., it represents simple musical concepts in simple ways, and requires complex representations only for complex scores. This paper shows how Advanced GUIDO Music Notation, the second layer of the GUIDO design, can be used as an adequate and complete notation interchange format. We demonstrate how all page layout, positioning, and spacing information can be easily specified in GUIDO so that all details of a score are exactly represented. Several implementations of Advanced GUIDO are discussed, including the music notation software NoteAbility and the GUIDO NoteServer, an on-line notation engine on the WWW. These first implementations of full GUIDO support demonstrate that Advanced GUIDO can be used to efficiently and accurately represent and exchange musical score information ranging from simple melodies to complex orchestral pieces.