MuseData stage 2 files

MuseData stage 2 files are MuseData files which contain graphical music-notation elements. MuseData stage 1 files do not contain notational elements.

Official Specification for MuseData stage 2 files:

• File:Stage2-specs.dm: Dmuse text file
• Media:Stage2-specs.html: converted into HTML
• MuseData examples: illustrations of how MuseData code translates into graphical music notation using muse2ps.

The MuseData stage 2 file is the primary format for storing Musical data at CCARH. In order to create printable music notation, stage2 files are first converted into i-files using the autoset program.

Organization in the MuseData database

For each musical work in the MuseData database, a directory (folder, library) called stage1 or stage2 will be found. Within that directory will be subdirectories for each movement of the musical work (typically given names such as 01 for movement 1, 02 for movemenet 2, etc.). Within these subdirectories, MuseData files are found. Each files represent and encoding of a separate instrumental part (or sometimes sets of instruments sharing the same staff). The files are numbered according to the part number in the score, such as 01 for the first part, 02 for the second part, and so on. When the MuseData files have variants in the data for different applications, a single-letter prefix is typically added to the part number in the filename. For example s01 would be the score-based version of the instrumental part, while p01 would be the part-based version of the instrumental part.

Multi-part MuseData stage2 files

To facilitate processing and distribution of MuseData for a particular movement (not at the work level), multiple stage2 files can be concatenated together. To separate one file from the next add a line containing the text "/eof" between each file. The files can be placed in any order (since multiple ordering arrangements may be present in the data). The very last two lines of the multi-file stage2 file are the "eof" marker plus a line with two slashes:

  /eof
  //

The last line is required, and is used to indicate to programs such as muse2ps that the end of the data has occurred. In the future, this marker may be used to separate movements from each other in a multi-movement stage2 work file.

Example multi-file Stage 2 files can be found on Github in the MuseData Vivaldi repository. A multi-line comment (between lines starting wit "&") is given before each included file, such as:

  &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
  
  FILE = https://bitbucket.org/musedata/vivaldi/src/master/roger/op1/rv073_01/stage2/02/01
  COMMIT = bb9d45f890748170a725400d1f2b5eab2415b3f6
  DOWNLOAD_DATE = Tue Apr  9 22:29:15 PDT 2024
  
  &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The "FILE" parameter is the filename "01" in this case, with optionally the full URL path to the single-part MuseData Stage 2 file. The "COMMIT" parameter is the commit hash in the repository (the source Bitbucket repository in this case), and the "DOWNLOAD_DATE" parameter is the date the the single part file was included in the multi-filter Stage 2 file. The extension ".mds" is an indication that the file contains multiple single-part files. The multi-file make also contain other files need in preparation of derivative files such as files containing options for creating MIDI file. Options starting with three comment chararacters "@@@" is used to store reference records containing metadata that is passed through the conversion to Humdrum data.