An extensible Optical Music Recognition system
David Bainbridge
Department of Computer Science,
University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.
d.bainbridge@cs.waikato.ac.nz
Tim Bell
Department of Computer Science,
University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
tim@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Abstract
Optical music recognition (OMR) is a form of structured
document image analysis where symbols overlaid on the conventional
five-line stave are isolated and identified so that the
music can be played through a MIDI system, or edited
in a music publishing system.
Traditionally OMR systems have had recognition
techniques hard-coded in software.
This paper describes a system that has been
designed to be extensible without the need to change the
system's source code.
Extensibility is achieved by providing tools for music recognition
that are used to tailor the system to suit the type of music being
recognised.
The tools include a selection of methods for identifying staves and
isolating objects from them, methods for describing and identifying
primitive musical shapes, and a grammar for specifying the relationships
between the shapes that are recognised.
The system is flexible enough to work with different publishers'
symbol sets, and even with different types of music notation, such
as the square-note notation used in early music.
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