MusicXML to AddmusicK converter

Translates musicxml parts into the .txt format expected by AddmusicK (version 1.0.11 though it may work with earlier versions with a bit of tweaking).

It was developped and tested under Linux, but it should work without issue on any platform that can run perl from a command line (including Windows and MacOS at least).

This is written in pretty straightforward perl 5 with only XML::LibXML and XML::Parser as dependencies. Both of those are usually available via every distribution's package managers or can be gotten via CPAN.

This was tested with exported systems from MuseScore 4, though I expect it should work with (uncompressed) musicXML exports from other notation software with possibly minor tweaks.

Usage: xml2amk [-c] <FILE>

Sends the converted FILE to standard output. FILE must be an uncompressed MusicXML file containing a score-partwise section of version 3 or above. In practice, every notation software should offer this as an export option (MuseScore version 4 does so as default for a musicxml export).

If the -c option is specified, xmk2amk will attempt to optimize the voices by finding and looping sections. This will reduce the size of the output, at the cost of a fairly costly optimization phase during conversion. This is probably best reserved for a final conversion once you are satisfied with the unoptimized result.

The result can serve directly as input to AddmusicK or can be edited further as needed.

What it can do

xml2amk will properly translate all notes from all staves in the system, provided there are no chords in any voice (split multiple notes in a staff into separate voices if you do not want to have one staff per voice.

Supported:

• dynamics
• articulations (accents, staccato, tenuto and slurs)
• any key signature/accidentals and transposing instruments

AddmusicK specific trickery:

• The first coda of a system will be translated into an "intro" mark (/), from which a repeating song will restart after the first play (in effect, there is an implicit da coda al fine)
• Placing an expression text item can be interpreted as an instrument selection, with the form @0 referencing a builtin instrument and "filename.brr" $xx $yy $zz $aa $bb into a custom instrument (the file will be added once to the #samples section as needed). Multiple references to the same instrument will point to the same instance provided all values are identical.
• Document information (title, author, arranger) will be included, with the source element translated to a #game entry

What's missing

Currently, error handling is minimal. The script will die if it encounters something it truly cannot cope with, but is otherwise extremely liberal in what input it will accept (and ignore) to avoid notation it doesn't know from breaking the conversion.

Planned:

• Repeat sections (they are currently being ignored, except for a coda as noted above)
• smart(er) guesses at builtin or custom instruments based on what the staff instruments are (right now everthing defaults to @0 unless you specify an instrument.