I’m doing background research for a project to write a software tool that converts between Western music notation, and Chinese numbered ‘jianpu‘ notation, and South Asian ‘swara‘ notation systems.
The use case is where a composer writes a score, in Western notation using tools like Finale or Sibelius or some such, which includes parts for Chinese or South Asian instruments. Currently, the performers of those instruments might rewrite their part by hand into the notation they are familiar with. This takes them hours. We’d like to enable the composer or their assistant to generate parts in the desired notation as a simple, fast export or conversion task.
Is anyone familiar with tools to do this? I haven’t been able to come across any in web searches or talking to local inter-cultural composers.
MusicXML is an obvious pivot format for this kind of conversion. It gives me access to many different notation tools in one go. Great! Also, I see that MusicXML 3.0 added support for jianpu clef elements. Great!
Are there any reference MusicXML format documents showing off well-done jianpu notation?
Are there any notation tools which are able to write or read MusicXML documents with jianpu notation?
(I am also asking this question on the MusicXML mailing list.)
I’ve answered this question in more detail on the MusicXML mailing list. The short answer is no, there’s nothing yet in these areas. I look forward to your pioneering efforts, which should inform us about what we need to add to support these repertoires, most notably jianpu, in the future.
There used to be a commercial program that handled jianpu notation but it was discontinued long ago. The manufacturer of the program kindly gave me a jianpu tutorial which guided the addition of the jianpu clef in MusicXML 3.0.
Alas, I don’t think I can add a musicxml tag to this question either…