Candidate Music IR Test Collections: A List
School of Informatics and School of Music, Indiana University
rev. mid-January 2006; partly rev. mid August 2008
By themselves, these collections might well be useful for a number of research projects. But with suitable queries and relevance judgments (if at all possible, human-produced), they would be much more useful, especially for cross-project comparisons via MIREX (the new TREC-like "Music IR Evaluation eXchange"). NB: appearance in this list means only that I think the collection exists in machine-readable form somewhere and might be available; there are serious copyright as well as other availability issues for most of these! Exception: collections whose name is prefixed with "*" don't even exist yet in electronic form, as far as I know.
The RWC database is the one most clearly available for research purposes, and it has the valuable feature of containing the same music in both MIDI and audio form; but it's very small. The Uitdenbogerd & Zobel collection has the only existing set of human relevance judgments I know of, but the judgments are not at all extensive.
This list is a continuing work-in-progress: I attempt to maintain it as a public service, but I have very little time for it, and it's certainly not complete or up-to-date. In particular, the listings for CMN in image format–scanned scores and/or sheet music–are just a smattering of what’s available now; see the entry for the MLA Sheet Music Collections site, which has much more (links to about 60 collections, though most do not seem to have been digitized). In any case, comments on the current list are welcome.
Entries are in alphabetical order by name.
|
Name |
Representation |
Encoding |
Complexity |
Approx size |
Comments |
|
Bach Chorales |
Event |
MIDI (SMF) |
Polyphonic |
400 W |
Short 4-part contrapuntal pieces: 185 (from BG v.39) + c.200 (from elsewhere) |
|
Barlow & Morgenstern instrumental |
CMN |
?? |
Monophonic (>99%) |
10,000 T |
Themes of classical instrumental pieces plus (in the original book) an "index". NB: a few involve 2-3 voices. Cf. Themefinder. |
|
Barlow & Morgenstern instrumental |
Event |
MIDI (SMF) |
Monophonic (>99%) |
10,000 T |
Themes of classical instrumental pieces plus (in the original book) an "index". NB: a few involve 2-3 voices. See www.multimedialibrary.com/Barlow/index.asp. |
|
Barlow & Morgenstern vocal |
CMN |
?? |
Monophonic |
8,000 T |
Themes of classical vocal pieces plus (in the original book) an "index". |
|
CCARH MuseData |
CMN |
MuseData, Humdrum/kern |
Polyphonic |
4000 M |
Complete movements of 881 Classical pieces from c. 1680 to 1815, at least 1/3 Bach. Includes 185 Bach chorales. See www.musedata.org |
|
CD Sheet Music |
"CMN" |
Image |
Polyphonic |
7000? |
Scanned scores. ca. 60 CDs, each of ca. 750-3800 pages of PDFs; total ca. 124,000 pages. Also available online from Byron Hoyt. See www.cdsheetmusic.com |
|
Choral Public Domain Library |
"CMN", CMN |
Image; some Finale, etc. |
Polyphonic |
8900 |
Contributed scores–all scanned, some also encoded–of choral works: www.cpdl.org . Site has many links to other free sheet-music sites. |
|
Classical Archives |
Event |
MIDI (SMF) |
Polyphonic |
17,600 |
Contributed MIDI files of public-domain works; quality uneven. They claim a total of over 40,000 files (MIDI and audio) by over 2,000 composers. MIDI See www.classicalarchives.com |
|
Classical Archives |
Audio |
Lossy (MP3, WMA) |
Polyphonic |
13,200 |
Recordings of public-domain works. They claim a total of over 40,000 files (MIDI and audio) by over 2,000 composers. |
|
Classical MIDI Connection |
Event |
MIDI (SMF) |
Polyphonic |
?? |
Contributed MIDI files of public-domain works; quality uneven. See www.classicalmidiconnection.com/cmc |
|
DML Digital Music Library |
"CMN" |
Image |
Polyphonic |
3500 W |
Scanned scores; "more than 100,000 sheets of music". See www.digitalmusiclibrary.com |
|
*ECOLM |
CMN |
LTN |
Polyphonic |
1000 |
Electronic Corpus of Lute Music: complete lute pieces |
|
FreeScores.com |
"CMN", event |
Image, MIDI |
Polyphonic |
7500 |
|
|
HymnQuest |
CMN |
?? |
Monophonic |
13,300 T |
Published by Stainer & Bell on CDROM (with content-based searching). See www.stainer.co.uk/hymnquest |
|
International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) |
"CMN" |
Image |
Polyphonic |
10,600 W |
Public domain scores, and scores contributed by their composers. See http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page. (The collection was unavailable for some time due to threats of legal action, but the organizers seem to have taken great care to avoid future problems of that type.) |
|
IRCAM |
Audio |
Most lossy (MP2), some lossless (CD) |
Polyphonic |
5000 W? |
contemporary music works, over 50% non-commercially available; all with metadata |
|
JHU/Levy Sheet Music |
"CMN", CMN |
Image; some Guido |
Polyphonic |
29,000 W=M |
scanned sheet music (c.100,000 pages, c. 80% public-domain). See levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu |
|
KernScores |
"CMN", CMN |
Humdrum/kern |
Polyphonic |
20,000 M |
Includes a wide variety of music, with thousands of folk songs from many cultures as well as thousands of classical pieces from Gregorian chant to Medieval music to Bach (chorales, Brandenburg Concerti, and keyboard music) and Vivaldi, to Beethoven and Chopin to Prokofiev, plus smaller numbers of piano rags, barbershop quartets, harmony examples, etc. The site also converts to other symbolic encodings like GMN, MusicXML, MIDI file, etc. See kern.humdrum.net/help/tour |
|
L of C/Copyright Sheet Music |
"CMN" |
Image |
Polyphonic |
62,500 W=M |
scanned sheet music ("Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music": pieces copyrighted in 1820-1860 and 1870-1885). See memory.loc.gov/ammem/mussmhtml/mussmhome.html |
|
L of C/Duke Sheet Music |
"CMN" |
Image |
Polyphonic |
3000 W |
scanned sheet music ("Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920": pieces from the Duke collection) |
|
Meldex (NZDML) Folksongs |
CMN |
Meldex |
Monophonic |
10,000 W=M |
9500 German, Chinese, and Anglo-American folksongs from Schaffrath's collection and Digital Tradition. (Better would be *"MELDEX Plus": add back in the c. 200 containing tuplets NZDML removed.) See www.nzdl.org/musiclib |
|
Musicnotes |
CMN |
Proprietary |
Polyphonic |
45,000 M |
Many genres. See www.musicnotes.com |
|
Musopen |
Audio, "CMN" |
??, Image |
?? |
??? |
Scanned scores and recordings of classical music, with a simple way to view the score as you listen. Everything is public domain. Users can say how much they'd pay for a recording to be added; the website operator "will combine your donation with others who want the same piece then find a professional to record and donate the work". See www.musopen.com |
|
Mutopia |
CMN |
LilyPond, image |
Polyphonic |
1300 |
Contributed classical works: www.mutopiaproject.org/index.html |
|
Nightingale |
CMN |
Nightingale |
Polyphonic |
600 M |
movements and excerpts, mostly classical (same music as below) |
|
Nightingale |
Event |
MEF |
Polyphonic |
600 M |
movements and excerpts, mostly classical (same music as above) |
|
NZDML Fake book |
CMN |
Meldex(?) |
Monophonic?? |
1200 |
popular tunes |
|
NZDML MidiMax |
Event |
MIDI (SMF) |
Polyphonic?? |
100,000 |
Standard MIDI files (collected from the Web?) |
|
Parsons |
Pitch Contour |
Pitch Contour |
Monophonic |
11,000 T |
up/down/repeat encoding of pitches of themes of classical pieces |
|
Pickens |
Event |
MIDI (SMF) |
Polyphonic |
1200 |
Piano-only MIDI files, collected by hand from the web, in a variety of styles: Ragtime, classical, popular, original |
|
RISM |
CMN |
Plaine &Easie |
Monophonic w/some chords |
730,000 T |
Incipits from works by over 19,500 composers. See www.nisc.com/Music/ |
|
RWC |
Event |
MIDI (SMF) |
Polyphonic |
300 W |
Pieces in five groups: 100 pop, 15 "royalty-free" (sic), 50 classical, 50 jazz, 100 genres; most original, all freely available for research (same music as below). (Also includes a database of instrument sounds.) See staff.aist.go.jp/m.goto/RWC-MDB |
|
RWC |
Audio |
Lossless (CD) |
Polyphonic |
300 W |
Pieces in five groups: 100 pop, 15 "royalty-free" (sic), 50 classical, 50 jazz, 100 genres; most original, all freely available for research (same music as above). (Also includes a database of instrument sounds.) See staff.aist.go.jp/m.goto/RWC-MDB |
|
Sheet Music Archive |
"CMN" |
Image |
Polyphonic |
?? |
"Downloadable editions of public domain classical music". About 80 composers are listed. See www.sheetmusicarchive.net |
|
SheetMusicNow |
CMN |
Proprietary |
Polyphonic |
32,000 M |
Classical and jazz. See www.sheetmusicnow.com |
|
Sunhawk |
CMN |
Proprietary |
Polyphonic |
50,000 M |
Many genres. See www.sunhawk.com |
|
Templeton |
"CMN" |
Image |
Polyphonic |
22,000 |
scanned sheet music; at Mississippi State University |
|
Themefinder |
CMN |
Humdrum/kern |
Monophonic |
37,000 T |
Themes and incipits of classical pieces and folksongs. Its classical repertoire includes essentially all the Barlow & Morgenstern instrumental themes. See www.themefinder.org |
|
UCLA Pop. American |
"CMN" |
Image |
Polyphonic?? |
600 |
Pieces of popular American music |
|
Uitdenbogerd & Zobel |
Event |
MIDI (SMF) |
Polyphonic |
10,500 |
MIDI files (collected from the Web). Some "real" relevance judgments exist. |
|
Variations |
"CMN" |
Image |
Polyphonic |
300 W |
Scanned scores; includes c. 70 complete operas. See www.dlib.indiana.edu/variations/scores |
|
Variations2 |
"CMN" |
Image |
Polyphonic |
?? |
Scanned scores |
|
Variations2 |
Audio |
Lossy (MP3) |
Polyphonic |
?? |
c. 9,000 hours |
|
Wikifonia |
"CMN" |
MusicXML |
Monophonic |
300 W |
"Wikifonia is the place for musicians to publish and collaborate on lead sheets." See www.wikifonia.org |
|
Other possibilities: |
|||||
|
Various |
"CMN" |
Image |
Polyphonic |
Music Library Association Sheet Music Collections web site: www.lib.duke.edu/music/sheetmusic/collections.html |
As used here, "Polyphonic" means any music that’s not monophonic, i.e., that has more than one note sounding at a time, regardless of rhythmic independence. "Approx. size" is number of documents (for classical pieces, often individual movements).
CMN = some form of Conventional Music Notation, perhaps very incompletely encoded.
"CMN" = Conventional Music Notation in image form, not encoded.
image = GIF, TIFF, JPEG, etc. (These would be far more useful if encoded, e.g., via Optical Music Recognition.)
LTN = Lute Tablature Notation.
SMF = Standard MIDI File (the standard encoding of time-stamped MIDI).
TSM = some form of time-stamped MIDI.
Suffixes on "Approx size" are W = works, M = movements, T = themes or incipits. "W=M" means that all or virtually all works in the collection include just one movement.
Thanks to Jeremy Pickens, Craig Sapp, Rainer Typke, and Masataka Goto for their help with this document.