4. Annotation Instructions

We learned in the Tutorial how to control the MUSCIMarker application and use it to annotate objects in images. Now, we will talk about how to specifically annotate musical notation, so that the data you are creating will be useful for optical music recognition experiments.

Note

Whereas the rest of the MUSCIMarker documentation technically applies to any MLClassList you might annotate, this section is specifically designed to cover how to properly annotate the musical notation primitives supplied with the annotation packages: mff-muscima-mlclasses-annot.xml.

Accurate annotation is absolutely critical to the success of our research. Therefore, you are expected to understand these guidelines fully. Mistakes may happen, of course, but if they happen at a frequency above some reasonable rate, you are going to see that reflected in your compensation.

If you do not understand something, please ask! Questions, requests for clarifications (especially accompanied by pictures of the problematic area) and generally communicating with us will never be discouraged. The e-mail address to direct questions to is hajicj@ufal.mff.cuni.cz

Caution

The following changes have been made to the original instructions, based on the testing round:

Aside from objects, we also have Relationships. Go re-read the Tutorial, please, and read these instructions thoroughly for how to apply relationships correctly to music notation primitives.

Dots have meaning. We now distinguish duration, staccato, repeat dots, and other dots.

Grace noteheads instead of grace notes. Where we originally annotated a grace note as its primitives and then added a “grace note” overlay, now we just annotate the primitives – but the notehead of a grace note is not a normal notehead-full, there is a new grace-notehead-full (or -empty) category.

Clefs are just one symbol. Dots are no longer marked separately for the F-clef (or any other clef that might come with dots). Just mark the clef.

Ties and slurs are marked separately. We had a curved-line category for both ties and slurs, but from now on, we will mark slurs as slur and ties as tie.

Key signatures and time signatures. Just like texts consisted of letters and an overlapping text_box, time signatures and key signatures now have their overlapping symbol as well. Mark the primitives (sharps/flats/etc. for key signatures, numerals/other time signature marks like alla breve for time signature) as usual, and analogous to text boxes, add the key_signature or time_signature “supersymbol”.

New text categories. Dynamics, tempo, instrument names, lyrics, and rehearsal marks now have their own text category. Other texts are, well, other_text. The rules for letters are still the same, but instead of a general text_box, use the new text categories.

New symbols for articulation. Turns out we missed symbols like tenuto, accents, etc. – they have now been added to the class list.

New repeat supersymbol. Repeats are marked as thin-barline, thick-barline, a bunch of repeat-dots, and then just like the new key and time signatures, these primitives together should be marked as a repeat symbol.

Nondestructive merge. For the “supersymbols” like text, time/key signatures and repeats, you can select all their component primitives, select the appropriate symbol class, and then press shift+m. This will save you some time, as the relationships between the supersymbol and its component primitives will be added automatically.

4.1. Guiding principles

Thee are a few things to understand first, before we dive into the specifics.

Pixels matter. Although you only see rectangles on the screen when you annotate objects, in the background, the exact objects are recorded: each pixel within the colored rectangle that you see has a Belongs/Doesn’t Belong label, based on how you traced the edges of the symbol.

Background does not matter. In black-and-white images, only the white pixels are ever recorded as belonging to a symbol.

All pixels in a symbol should be marked. So if you get intersections, such as between a stem and a beam, the intersection pixels just belong to both symbols. Belonging to one symbol does not exclude a pixel from belonging to another symbol. Intersections happen all the time.

images/guidelines/intersections.png

Not all non-background pixels are part of a symbol. There may be non-background pixels that are a result of the writer’s mistake, or artifacts of the input mode (e.g. stylus on a tablet - sometimes, the tablet software might have preferred to make 90-degree corners or straight lines where it’s obvious there should be a curve...). It’s perfectly fine to leave these extra pixels out of the symbols you are marking. In fact, including such extra pixels would be a mistake.

images/guidelines/spurious_pixels.png

Layered annotation. Sometimes (e.g. text, key signatures), you will be asked to annotated the same thing with more markings. For instance, a correct annotation of the key signature for A major has three sharp annotations and a key_signature annotation that covers all these symbols. This is because musical notation has several layers at which it needs to be annotated: we need to know, at the same time, that the symbols for key signatures are sharps, and that these praticular sharps are part of a key signature.

images/guidelines/layered_annotation.png

Use your judgement. By definition, we cannot really enumerate all the rules for annotating, as you will always encounter a new situation with handwriting. Stick to the guiding principles, your understanding of what the annotations should achieve (accurate markings of the notation primitives that together form the musical score you’re presented with), and it should help you decide what the appropriate action is for most situations. If you really are not sure, even after thinking about it and reviewing these guidelines, then send us an email to hajicj@ufal.mff.cuni.cz!

4.2. Specific symbol rules

We now give the instructions for individual symbol classes. Make sure you understand these. If you don’t, ask! (hajicj@ufal.mff.cuni.cz)

4.3. Notes

Primitives and note symbols. The first part of annotating notes is marking the notation primitives: notehead, stem, flags/beams.

Then, add the note primitive relationships. Select notehead-class primitive (notehead-full, notehead-empty, grace-notehead-full, grace-nothead-empty) and all other

Caution

Do not have more than one notehead selected when auto-adding relationships with p. It can very easily lead to spurious edges (see Annotating Relationships in the Tutorial).

Tip

The fastest way of selecting a bunch of primitives is to use the Obj. Select tool.

Danger

The rest of the instructions is obsolete! Ignore them! We’re working on the new ones.

Then, mark the entire note using the appropriate category: solitary_note, solitary_chord, beamed_group, grace_note, grace_beamed_group, or other_note for cases that do not fall into either of these three categories.

images/guidelines/note_primitives_and_complex.png

What constitutes an entire note? (Or, a beamed group?) In the previous paragraph, you were instructed to assign a label to an “entire note”. However, this needs further clarification.

Attached to a note means a symbol that pertains specifically to the given note. So, ledger lines are attached to a note. Duration dots are attached to a note. A flat or a sharp is attached to a note (although this is more of a technical definition, because commonly the sharp affects the rest of the notes on that pitch within the measure, we still consider sharps and flats attached to their respective notes). However, ties and slurs are not attached to notes. Crescendo and decrescendo hairpins are not. Tuple signs, volta signs, texts, clefs, key signatures – these symbols are not attached to notes.

images/guidelines/note_attachment.png

So, we want the symbols attached to a note to be a part of the complex note symbol (whichever category applies). The logic behind this decision is this: all the components of the complex note symbol are marked individually. So, if we later want the complex note to not include some symbols like staccato dots or ledger lines, we can “subtract” them from the complex note. But if they are not a part of the complex note, adding them is a much harder problem: we would have to decide to which complex note they should be attached, etc.

Beams and beamed groups. A beam is just one line connecting the stems to give note type information. A group of four 16th notes with beams will consist of four notehead_full symbols, four stem symbols and two beam symbols. With a dotted note in a beamed group, the very short beam “hook” on the shorter note of the dotted pair is also a beam.

images/guidelines/beamed_group.png

Rests have their own set of primitives (quarter_rest, half_rest, etc.). Individual rests should not be marked with complex symbols, but rests that are inside a beamed group are marked as a part of the beamed_group. (Again, the logic is, we can filter them out, and the beamed group should consist of all the duration it spans in the given voice.)

Grace notes are marked like regular notes (notehead, stem and flags or beams), but there are two extra actions. First, if the grace note has a strikethrough (like acacciatura in early music), this strikethrough is marked with the grace-strikethrough symbol. Second, the entire grace note (or group, in case of beamed grace note groups) is marked with the grace_note (or grace_beamed_group) symbol.

Grace notes are also attached to their complex note! So, a grace note belongs to two complex notes: its grace category, and the solitary_note, beamed_group or whatever it is attached to.

images/guidelines/grace_notes.png

Other complex notes. Sometimes, there may be notes in non-playing contexts, such as in tempo markings or proportional tempo transitions. These are still annotated the same way (notehead, stem, dot, etc.), but their complex class is other_solitary_note or other_beamed_group.

Ossia. If there is an ossia, annotate it as if it were regular notation, and then mark it all as ossia.

4.4. Other Notations

Key signatures The sharps or flats are marked as sharp or flat, just as if the symbols are next to notes. However, the symbols making up the key signature should all be marked as a part of a key_signature symbol.

images/guidelines/key_signature.png

Time signatures The time signatures consisting of numerals are marked as the given numerals; then, the numeral-based time signatures should be marked as a symbol of the time_signature class. The “whole” time signature (a “C” symbol), the alla breve (a “C” with a vertical line) and other time signature symbols have their own distinct categories; they should not be marked as time_signature on top of these.

images/guidelines/time_signature.png

F-clef now gets no special marking rules.

Ties and slurs. Please do mark ties as ties and slurs as slurs. (This is contrary to the original instructions we had in mind, but nevertheless, we have determined that a more detailed annotation is better than a less detailed one, no excuses.) If you are not sure, make a guess.

4.5. Handling text

Text is marked as individual letters. Upper-case letters and lower-case letters are not the same. Numerals (including time signatures) will have the same fate. As with key signatures or notes, texts are composite symbols; the letters are the “text primitives” and there are classes of texts.

Text boxes join letters together to make sensible wholes. For instance, a “dolce” expressive instruction should be annotated as letter_d, letter_o, letter_l, letter_c, letter_e, and then the whole region of the letters should be marked as a text_box.

Dynamics text is also annotated as letters, for instance a pianissimo sign (pp) is annotated as letter_p and letter_p, but instead of text_box, the marking is annotated as text_dynamics.