Release of Music Processing Suite 1.15.0

Music Processing Suite 1.15.0 was released on January 6, 2025.

New Features and Enhancements:

  • Updated Eclipse base platform to version 2024-12
  • MPS is now able to compute the importance, also referred to as “indispensability”, of all note onsets/beats in all measures of a piece, respecting the metric context. The algorithm was proposed by Clarence Barlow. Two new analysis features are available:
    • Indispensability over Time: indispensabilities of all note onsets over time (absolute time or measures)
    • Indispensability Distribution: absolute or relative distribution of indispensability values
  • Significant performance improvements when writing or reading context layer models
  • Support for new Homebrew path /opt/homebrew/bin on Apple Silicon Macs, which allows to auto-detect external applications like GraphViz

Bugfixes:

  • Fixed incorrect beat and measure fraction calculations in upbeats
  • Fixed a NullPointerException when merging scale analysis data for multiple files when no scale analysis data was available for at least one file
  • Fixed a problem related to the Eclipse 2024-12 update that caused the CoreNLP server not to be startable (previous MPS versions were not affected)

Documentation:

  • List of analysis features was updated
  • Documentation for automatic detection of external libraries such as MuseScore and LaTeX was updated to contain all current built-in search paths

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

Release of Music Processing Suite 1.10.1

Music Processing Suite 1.10.1 was released on January 28, 2022.

New Features and Enhancements:

  • Enhanced automatic software detection on various operating systems, especially MuseScore detection on Linux
  • Analysis View: Column widths of the table displaying the raw data are automatically adjusted to the optimal width whenever new data is displayed
  • Analysis Report PDFs containng aggregated plots (collection or corpus scope) use simplified harmonies for harmony-related plots (otherwise plots become much too confusing)

Bugfixes:

  • Enhanced environment configuration for LaTeX compiler runs in order to avoid frequent error message sh: tput: command not found and tput: No value for $TERM and no -T specified
  • Fixed incorrect path for LaTeX executables on Windows in documentation

Release of Music Processing Suite 1.10.0

Music Processing Suite 1.10.0 was released on January 12, 2022.

New Features and Enhancements:

  • Upgraded Eclipse platform to version 2021-12 (4.22)
  • Analysis enhancements:
    • Lyrics can now be analyzed even when distributed over multiple voices
  • Enhancements for analysis report PDFs:
    • Sentiment analysis plots now visualize durations of sentences with the corresponding start and end times
    • Sentences in sentiment analysis plots are numbered and listed below the plots
  • UI enhancements:
    • Multiple pieces can now be selected and analyzed simultaneously
    • There is now a preference to select the default score generation application (MuseScore or LilyPond)
  • Support for power chords when resolving harmonies
  • Internal enhancements, optimizations and dependency upgrades

Bugfixes:

  • Lyrics containing special characters like quotes and semicolons are now stored and loaded correctly in CSV files
  • Charts exported from the analysis view in MPS were flipped vertically. This has been fixed.
  • Fixed an issue which caused context harmonies to be chosen as key in generated scores
  • Fixed errors like java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: The value '6/4' is invalid. when loading fitness function configurations containing distributions for time signatures
  • Corrected JVM command line parameter for Java 16+

Release of Music Processing Suite 1.9.0

Music Processing Suite 1.9.0 was released on June 27, 2021.

MPS now runs on Apple Silicon (64-bit ARM-based Macs).

New Features and Enhancements:

  • Upgraded Eclipse platform to version 2021-06 (4.20)
  • Provide version for 64-bit ARM Macs (M1 processors)
  • Analysis View Enhancements:
    • Redundant resource tree was removed from the view resulting in much more space; resources can now be seleted directly in the project explorer
    • Analysis view can be opened from the context menu of any *.csv file (before this was only possible on the folder containing the analysis data)
  • Added new columns “end time” and “end measure” to sentiment analysis result files
  • Improved order of columns in sentiment analysis result files
  • Added generation of simplified harmony progression graphs
  • Changed graph file names from “chord progression” to “harmony progression”
  • Visualization of file paths in the corpus was improved in the search result view
  • Added documentation for command line parameters enabling to run MPS with Java 16
  • Updated analysis feature documentation

Bugfixes:

  • Fixed an issue which caused search results not to be refreshed on subsequent searches
  • Top-level search results can now be double-clicked in order to open the score (e.g. in MuseScore)
  • Fixed an encoding issue with sentiment analysis using CoreNLP as backend which occurred when analyzing non-English lyrics

Incompatibility Notes:

  • The order of the columns in sentiment analysis result files has changed. In order to visualize sentiment analysis results correctly, the analysis has to be run again with the new version of the software.

Release of Music Processing Suite 1.8.2

Music Processing Suite 1.8.2 was released on May 2, 2021.

MPS now features sentiment analysis of lyrics. Check out the overview plot for Every Little Thing She Does is Magic by the Police including pitch, loudness, dissonance, sentiment polarity and harmony plots over time:

New Features and Enhancements:

  • Sentiment Analysis Enhancements:
    • MPS can now connect to Stanford CoreNLP servers for advanced sentiment analysis
    • Sentiment analysis features now include fine-grained sentiment polarities:
      • very negative
      • negative
      • neutral
      • positive
      • very positive
    • Enhanced sentiment analysis plots in analysis view and analysis report PDFs
  • Enhancements in Analysis View:
    • Duration-related axes are now logarithmic
    • Curation- and beat-related axes now show fractions as labels
    • Beat-related axes show regular eighth note steps
  • Use simplified distributions of implicit harmonies in overview plot in analysis report PDFs
  • Enhanced pie charts in analysis view to show percentages instead of raw floating point numbers
  • Enhanced installation documentation

Bugfixes:

  • Fixed alignment and centering of overview plot in analysis report PDFs
  • Fixed encoding issue for rotated X axis labels (Windows-specific)
  • Decimal separators in analysis view plots was dependent on system language, now English decimal separators are always used

Release of Music Processing Suite 1.8.1

Music Processing Suite 1.8.1 was released on April 3, 2021.

New Features and Enhancements:

  • Enhanced analysis of implicit harmonies
    • New analysis feature: chord inversions are exported along with the detected chords over time (and over measures)
    • New analysis feature: chord inversion distribution
  • Analysis view enhancements
    • View now opens in the center of the IDE as opposed to the bottom area
    • Improved initial user feedback and feedback for non-plattable data files
  • Added documentation for progression graphs
  • Improved documentation for MuseScore installation

Bugfixes:

  • Fixed ClassNotFoundException when running composer
  • Fixed a bug which caused measures with upbeats not to be aligned correctly when parsing MusicXML files
  • MPS can now process non-compressed MusicXML files with file extension *.musicxml (before, the IDE only processed *.xml files)
  • Fixed handling of minor seventh chords in LilyPond export
  • MIDI files are now included when scanning corpora
  • Fixed a problem when aggregating analysis result files with time signatures