Welcome to the Music Processing Suite Website!

Music Processing Suite (MPS) is a software system for advanced symbolic music processing with the following features:

Music Modeling

MPS is based on music models containing individual representations of musical aspects and contexts such as meter, tempo, rhythms, pitches, scales, harmonies, loudness, lyrics and more.

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Music Analysis

Analysis infrastructure for statistical music analysis and visualization. MPS generates PDF reports containing statistical diagrams, tables, graphs and Markov models.

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Composition Language

Composition language for intuitive, redundancy-free music specification and notation. Easily create your own scores and lead sheets.

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Music Search

Advanced context-sensitive music search functionality

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Transformations

Transformation infrastructure for conversions between various music representation formats such as MPS Models, MIDI, MusicXML, LilyPond, PDF, CSV, SuperCollider and more.

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Powerful IDE

MPS is a powerful customizable application based on Eclipse

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News and Updates

Latest Posts

Release of Music Processing Suite 1.14.0

Music Processing Suite 1.14.0 was released on February 8, 2024.

New Features and Enhancements:

  • Updated Eclipse base platform to version 2023-12
  • MuseScore 4 is now detected automatically as score generation application
  • Tempo specifications are now added to generated scores by default
  • Added analysis feature for scale conformity in the scope of the whole piece. The algorithm computes the semitone distance of all pitches to the context harmony root note and the key root note. At the end the conformity of all built-in scales is computed as a percentage value.

Bugfixes:

  • MusicXML Processing:
    • When playing back generated MusicXML files, instrument sounds were not correct in all cases. A new attribute for instrument definitions was introduced that allows to specify the MusicXML instrument sound as specified in the MusicXML specification. The MPS instrument library was enhanced where applicable.
  • Composition Editor:
    • In case a score was generated for a composition file which was not saved yet, a dialog appeared asking whether the file should be saved. However, the old version was still used. This issue has been fixed.

Release of Music Processing Suite 1.13.0

Music Processing Suite 1.13.0 was released on April 8, 2023.

Note: since version 1.11.0, MPS requires Java 17 to run. It is recommended to download a Java 17 JDK for your operating system from Zulu.

New Features and Enhancements:

  • Updated Eclipse base platform to version 2023-03
  • Added experimental feature to compute correlations between musical parameters. The following correlations are computed if corresponding data is available:
    • Loudness vs. Dissonance
    • Loudness vs. Sentiment Polarity
    • Dissonance vs. Sentiment Polarity

Bugfixes:

  • MusicXML Processing:
    • Minor seventh (m7) chords are now correctly exported to MusicXML
    • Fixed export of lyric syllables that are extended across multiple notes
    • Fixed issue where lyric syllables were repeated if notes were divided (e.g. across a bar line)
    • Previously it was not possible to tie more than two notes rhythmically when exporting to MusicXML. This issue has been fixed.
  • Miscellaneous Fixes:
    • Fixed a NullPointerException during automatic detection of external applications that occurred on Windows systems in case of insufficient file system permissions
    • Fixed an IndexOutOfBoundsException when generating scores with the fret board diagram option disabled and no fret board instrument selected

Release of Music Processing Suite 1.12.0

Music Processing Suite 1.12.0 was released on August 26, 2022.

Note: since version 1.11.0, MPS requires Java 17 to run. It is recommended to download a Java 17 JDK for your operating system from Zulu.

New Features and Enhancements:

  • Updated Eclipse base platform to version 2022-06

Bugfixes:

  • MusicXML Processing:
    • Fixed NullPointerException that occurred if MusicXML files did not contain an identification element
    • Fixed NullPointerException that occurred if MIDI instrument definitions did not contain certain elements such as midiProgram
    • Fixed an issue that resulted in incorrect context layer model representations if rests were modeled as chords

Release of Music Processing Suite 1.11.0

Music Processing Suite 1.11.0 was released on May 22, 2022.

Important note: MPS now requires Java 17 to run. It is recommended to download a Java 17 JDK for your operating system from Zulu.

New Features and Enhancements:

  • General:
    • Updated Eclipse base platform to version 2022-03
  • MusicXML Support:
    • MPS now supports MusicXML 4.0
    • MusicXML score export now includes chord symbols
    • Improved internal caching of instrument associations
  • Sentiment Analysis:
    • Sentences are now also divided at semicolons
    • Removed VADER sentiment analysis framework since CoreNLP provides much better results for lyrics
  • Music Analysis:
    • The analysis view is opened automatically if not already opened after music was analyzed
  • Miscellaneous Enhancements:
    • Automatic detection of external applications now includes the AppData/Local and AppData/Roaming folders on Windows
    • If an external application can not be located, additional details about searched paths is available in the displayed dialog
    • Composition files can now have the extensions *.mcl or *.mc2l
  • Documentation:
    • Updated documentation regarding Java requirements
    • Rhythm documentation was enhanced with an example containing tied notes and minor issues were fixed
    • Old keyword tonalCenter was consistently replaced with key

Bugfixes:

  • MusicXML:
    • MusicXML parser did not process bass notes of harmonies in all cases
    • Fixed a bug which caused wrong instrument associations of percussion instruments while loading MusicXML files
    • Simultanous percussion notes and percussion rests are now correctly placed in MPS streams
    • Fixed a “ripple effect” during instrument detection that caused instrument names to be considered similar depending on the sequence of instruments that were provided
    • Fixed NullPointerException if note head information is not present
    • MusicXML parser: poet was not read correctly
    • MusicXML export: composer was written to output instead of poet
  • Sentiment Analysis:
    • Fixed race condition when starting external CoreNLP server – first request sporadically resulted in java.net.ConnectException
    • Connections to CoreNLP servers are now always released even if the response cannot be parsed – in previous versions this could cause the client to block indefinitely
  • Miscellaneous Bugfixes:
    • Fixed spelling of Mandolin (it’s not Mandoline) on the UI and in LilyPond include file names that are required to generate fret board diagrams
    • Fixed a NullPointerException that happend while automatically searching external applications on Windows
    • CoreNLP could not be located automatically on Windows because MPS looked for the wrong JAR file name
    • Fixed java.lang.Error: SWT Resource was not properly disposed when closing the analysis view

Latest Release

Latest MPS version: 1.14.0
Released on February 8, 2024

Music Processing Suite is developed by David Pace and originates from his dissertation project at the University of Music in Karlsruhe, Germany.