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Standard formats

Open formats for encoding, exchanging and displaying music notation.

  • IEEE 1599 – Multi-layer XML-based format for music.
  • MIDI – The MIDI specifications, from the MIDI Association.
  • MNX – Next-generation notation format from the W3C Music Notation Community Group; draft specification.
  • Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) – Open-source effort to define a system for encoding musical documents in a machine-readable structure.
  • MusicXML – The standard open format for exchanging digital sheet music.
  • SMuFL (Standard Music Font Layout) – Specification for mapping music symbols to Unicode for use in music fonts.

Notation and engraving (open source)

Open-source notation software and libraries. For commercial scorewriters see the comparison linked under See also.

  • Abjad – Python API for building LilyPond files.
  • Denemo – Score editor for LilyPond.
  • Frescobaldi – Editor for LilyPond.
  • GUIDO Engine library – Library for rendering GUIDO and other notation. (link redirects; may have moved)
  • GUIDO Music Notation (GMN) – Plain-text music notation format.
  • Hacklily – Online editor for LilyPond.
  • LilyPond – Text-based music engraving.
  • MuseScore – Open-source notation software. The musescore.com sharing site is a separate, commercial service.
  • Scorelib – Library for parsing SCORE data files, by Craig Sapp (SCORE itself is abandoned software).
  • Scoring Notes – Blog and podcast with news and reviews of notation software, including commercial products.
  • Verovio – Fast, portable and lightweight library for engraving Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) scores into SVG.
  • VexFlow – JavaScript library for rendering music notation.

Optical music recognition (OMR)

  • Audiveris – Open-source optical music recognition.

See also

Links last checked: 2026-10-27. Found a broken link, or have a suggestion? Open an issue.