This is a list of links to resources for computational musicology, with a focus on working with symbolic scores. All of the resources are free and open source/access, except where specified.

There are other, excellent lists out there compiled and hosted by institutions like:

… and individuals like:

I have / will contribute this content to those lists where appropriate, but I think that this list is sufficiently distinct to warrant a separate existence, particularly in light of the focus on working with scores. Please do reach out if you would like to contribute an item to this list, or if you have a suggestion for how to organize it better, or perhaps even a grand idea for us list makers should coordinate our efforts.

Scores and Datasets

Analysis datasets (e.g. harmony, form)

Encoded scores

Metadata

MIDI

Scores as images (not encoded)

Apps / Software / Code Libraries for …

Analysis / Parsing / Manipulation of Scores

Digital music-making

Edition

Notation / Engraving / Score Rendering

See Wikipedia’s ‘Comparison of scorewriters’ to compare Dorico, Finale, FORTE, Lilypond (and editors including Denemo, Frescobaldi, and Hacklily), MuseScore, Notion, Sibelius, and more.

In addition to which:

And further online-only applications (all commercial):

Optical Music Recognition (OMR)

See Wikipedia’s ‘Comparison for commercial software like musitek, sharpeye, and SmartScore, as well as freeware like Audiveris. In addition to which:

Standard Formats

  • IEEE 1599 - multi-layer XML-based format for music.
  • MEI (Music Encoding Initiative) - an open-source effort to define a system for encoding musical documents in a machine-readable structure.
  • MIDI
  • MNX File format (forthcoming) - draft specifications.
  • MusicXML - the standard open format for exchanging digital sheet music.
  • SMuFL (Standard Music Font Layout) - a specification for mapping music symbols to Unicode for use in music fonts.
  • XXX - Further (not international standard) file formats supported by music21: ABC, Capella, Humdrum, MuseData, Noteworthy, NoteworthyBinary, Scala, TinyNotation (native to music21), Volpiano

Teaching Theory / Fundamentals / Aural Skills

Visualisation / Annotation

Groups and Institutions

Companies working on automatic composition with A.I.

Journals and conference proceedings

Other gatherings and international organisations

Projects

Research Groups

Here is a list of research laboratories working on MIR problems. The entries are sorted first by alphabetical order of their country code, and secondly by group name.

NB: I’ve now integrated this section into the ISMIR website for which the source code is here and the public-facing website is here.

Group Name and URL University/Company/City Country code Principal investigator Notes
Centre for Systematic Musicology U. of Graz AT Richard Parncutt  
Institute of Computational Perception Johannes Kepler U., Linz AT Gerhard Widmer and Markus Schedl  
Intelligent Music Processing and Machine Learning Group Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (OFAI) AT Gerhard Widmer  
Music Information Retrieval Lab Vienna U. of Technology AT Andreas Rauber  
Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Wien (MDW) U. of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna AT Werner Goebl Inludes the Institut für musikalische Akustik - Wiener Klangstil (IWK)
Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music, Media and Technology (CIRMMT) McGill U. CA    
Distributed Digital Music Archives & Libraries Lab (DDMAL) McGill U. CA Ichiro Fujinaga  
Digital and Cognitive Musicology Lab (DCML) EPFL CH Martin Rohrmeier  
Institute for Music Informatics and Musicology U. of Music, Karlsruhe DE Thomas Seedorf  
International Audio Laboratories Erlangen Fraunhofer IIS and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Erlangen DE Techniques and tools for analyzing, structuring, retrieving, navigating, and presenting music-related audio signals and other time-dependent multimedia data streams.  
Special Interest Group on Music Analysis (N/A) DE (N/A)  
Music Informatics and Cognition Group, CREATE Aalborg U. DK David Meredith  
Application of Information and Communication Technologies Research Group U. of Málaga ES Lorenzo J. Tardón and Isabel Barbancho Perez  
Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales (ICCMU) U. Complutense de Madrid ES Álvaro Torrente Sánchez-Guisande  
Music Technology Group U. Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona ES Xavier Serra Specialized in sound and music computing. With more than 50 researchers, the MTG carries out research on topics such as audio signal processing, sound and music description, musical interfaces, sound and music communities and performance modeling among others
‘Algomus’ (‘Algorithmic Musicology’) group U. de Lille FR Mathieu Giraud Research lab on computational music analysis, focusing on large-scale analysis of scores
Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (CESR) U. de Tours FR    
Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique / Musique (IRCAM) Paris FR Frank Madlener  
IReMus Paris FR    
Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (IRIT) Toulouse FR   The SAMoVA team focuses its research activities mainly on audiovisual content structuring, analysis and modeling. The MELODI team focuses on natural language processing.
Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique (LaBRI) and Studio de Création Musical (SCRIME) Bordeaux FR   Part of the French CNRS. The first research interest implies music information retrieval for enhancing music recommendations and automatic playlist creation. The second research interest involve creating new ways to play music interactively which is supported in the free and open-source intermedia sequencer i-score.
Music Informatics Laboratory (LIM), Dept. of Computer Science U. of Milan IT Goffredo Haus  
Media Interaction Group, Information Technology Research Institute (ITRI) National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba JPN Masataka Goto  
Music and Audio Computing Lab Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) KOR Juhan Nam  
Music and Audio Research Group (MARG) Seoul National U. KOR Kyogu Lee  
Multimedia Computing Group T.U. Delft NL Cynthia Liem and Julián Urbano working on music The MMC Group develops algorithms for enriching, accessing, and searching large quantities of multimedia data. Our work on Music Information Retrieval focuses on search, recommendation, similarity, evaluation and methodological issues.
RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion Department of Musicology U. of Oslo NO Anne Danielsen  
MIR Group University of Coimbra PRT Rui Pedro Paiva  
Music and AI Lab Academia Sinica TWN Yi-Hsuan Yang  
Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR) U. of Plymouth UK Eduardo Miranda and Alexis Kirke  
Centre for Digital Music (C4DM) Queen Mary, U. of London UK Mark Sandler and Simon Dixon C4DM is a world-leading multidisciplinary research group in the field of music and audio technology. Research ranges from record/replay equipment to the simulation and synthesis of instruments and voices, acoustic spaces, music understanding, delivery and retrieval. With a strong focus on making innovation usable, we are ideally placed to work with industry leaders in forging new business models for the music industry.
Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM) U. of Huddersfield UK Michael Clarke  
Music Informatics Research Group (MIRG) City U. London UK Tillman Weyde  
(Centre for) Practice and Research in Science and Music, (PRiSM) RNCM and U. of Oxford UK Emily Howard and Marcus du Sautoy  
Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities, (CCARH) Stanford U. USA Craig Sapp and Eleanor Selfridge-Field  
Center for Music Technology (GTCMT) Georgia Tech USA Gil Weinberg  
Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Laboratory (CSML) Ohio State U. USA Daniel Shanahan (PI), Eugenia Costa-Giomi, David Huron (Emeritus)  
International Music Information Retrieval Systems Evaluation Laboratory (IMIRSEL), School of Information Sciences U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) USA J. Stephen Downie  
Cuthbert lab Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) USA Michael Cuthbert  
MuE: Music + Engineering U. of Miami USA    
Music and Entertainment Technology Laboratory (MET-lab) Expressive and Creative Interaction Technologies (ExCITe) Center, Drexel U., Philadelphia USA  Youngmoo Kim Devoted to research in digital media technologies that will shape the future of entertainment. MET-lab’s primary research focus encompasses several areas: music information retrieval, music production technology, new musical interfaces, and musical humanoid robotics. The lab also emphasizes K-12 outreach and hosts Summer Music Technology, a one-week experience based educational curriculum for high school students.
Music and Audio Research Laboratory (MARL) New York U. USA Juan Pablo Bello Doctoral and masters programs in music technology in the heart of New York City. Main research areas include MIR, Immersive Audio, Music Cognition and Interactive Systems
Music Informatics Group Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology USA Alexander Lerch