MusicXML integration

Scaler 2 Feature Requests
41

Here is a use-case example.

Today I wrote a song, in the form of a chord chart. (No official melody yet.)

I wrote it with guitar in hand, finding the chords and entering them into iRealPro.
This was very efficient, and was done on my iPad, away from the main studio.

Next I was able to export from iRealPro as MusicXML and then import that into Band-in-a-Box. OK, that opens up a whole new probability. It was easy!

Now I want to import into Scaler, to open -that- probability. Well, not so easy!

Scaler won’t import MusicXML (which represents the chords exactly as desired), but only MIDI. Yes, I can export MIDI from iRealPro, but that is a -performance-, not a chord sheet. Playing that back into Scaler with Detect on is a valid workflow for some scenarios, however, not for what I want here.

What I want here is to get the chosen 32 sequential chords (of this 32 bar tune) as such into Scaler for further use and transmogrification via Scaler’s unique capabilities.

However, the fact seems to be I can’t get there from here, except by manually re-entering all the chords one-by-one into Scaler.

The ability to import MusicXML (just the chords, which are very easy to parse out, rest of the spec not needed!) into Scaler would completely solve this scenario and empower me to easily compose in iRealPro (or any other software that exports MusicXML), at any physical location, and then simply and easily transfer into Scaler back at studio home base when and as desired.

To me, this is a very important scenario, not a niche case.

I hope this example explanation assists in helping the Scaler team to come to view it likewise.

Cheers!

42

If I may put it this way, the basic concept is:

“Enter chords once, then use them anywhere, without needing to enter them again, ever!”

Is there any musician or composer that doesn’t want that?

In terms of today’s available specifications, this is well achieved via implementation of MusicXML import and export capabilities.

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43

I agree, in that I think specialist, vertical. products do need to have a focus on the eco=system around them. This avoids pressure on developers to keep expanding the ‘width’ of the product, rather than the ‘depth’ , where its distinctive attractions live.

It’s worth a glance over

https://www.w3.org/2021/06/musicxml40/tutorial/midi-compatible-part/

as this shows, within the current positioning of Scaler, how much might be done. It can be seen that a great many of the elements in MusicXML have no equivalent in the Scaler structure, so in fact as it stands only a relatively small subset of the full schema could be implemented.
As one example, there is no real ‘timing’ information in scaler, and it essentially supports only chords and not notes.

However, Scaler saves its state and outputs progressions in XML, both of which can be read back in. It seems to me that it is conceptually possible to ‘transform’ a MusicXML using XSLT into the subset schema of the Saler imports.

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