The ZIPI Music Parameter Description Language

ZIPI's Music Parameter Description Language (MPDL) is a new language for describing music. It delivers musical parameters, such as articulation and brightness, to notes or groups of notes. It includes parameters that are well understood and universally implemented, such as loudness and pitch, and supports parameters that should be more common in the future, such as brightness and noise amount. A large number of parameters remain unspecified, thus ensuring expandability and flexibility. The MPDL is just one of ZIPI's application layers; others will include MIDI, data dumps, and digital audio. This article does not address any of the lowlevel networking issues associated with ZIPI. We will assume that ZIPI's lower levels deliver arbi-