Welcome to Wiki::Score, a platform similar to the Wikipedia for cooperative editing of large scale music scores (eg. operas, symphonies, cantatas etc). Wiki::Score is a wiki which, using the ABC notation for music representation, is primarily intended for publishing modern editions of unknown works buried in music archives. It has emerged from experience in the lab sessions of the Computing for Musicology course of the Music degree of the University of Minho.

The basic principle is that of dividing a large score into a matrix of elementary music cells (eg. the flute part of the first movement of a particular symphony) so that many collaborators can work concurrently on the same source. Matrices have as many columns as sections in the work being edited (eg. an aria of an opera) and as many rows as parts (eg. the soprano part). At any time collaborators can build the score of the section they are editing, modulo selection of the parts of interest, and checking the outcome in Abc, PDF, MIDI etc.

Please see below how to contribute to Wiki::Score.

Wiki::Score finds its early motivation in our aim to contribute to bringing to light the vast number of autograph scores of 17c-18c operas which are kept in Portuguese archives, namely in the Ajuda and National Libraries. Of course, this can be applied to any other sources and funds from anywhere in the world.

Acknowledgements: we acknowledge the fabulous work of Biblioteca Nacional Digital and other European digital libraries mentioned below, without which this work would never be possible.

One of our pilot projects is the opera Demetrio a Rodi in the table below. It is made of 41 sections and involves 28 parts (instruments and voices).

Click a project's Name to have access to its parts matrix:

Please send an e-mail to narcarvalho@gmail.com and ask for a user registration for editing current projects. Contributors knowing of other sources which they would like to publish are welcome to send us a link to the source, for the project to be created.

In case you don't know the ABC notation only a mild effort is required to learn its basics. Have a look at the examples in Abc Examples. Link Get Started With Abc will help you to get started. The standard of the notation can be found in Abc Standard.

In case you are familiar with web editors you can copy the contents of the cell you want to change into this editor, edit it there and paste the outcome back to Wkiki::score.

If you are using Firefox this can be further automated: see How to contribute with EasyABC in 5 steps

Try your first contribution in one of the parts of Pugnani's opera Demetrio a Rodi, for instance - the source is quite readable.

• ABC Manual by Guido Gonzato
• ABC Manual - Portuguese - translation by Alberto Simões of Guido Gonzato excellent ABC manual
• EasyABC - open source ABC editor for Windows, OSX and Linux

Paper WIKI::SCORE - A Collaborative Environment For Music Transcription And Publishing. J.J. ALMEIDA, N.R. CARVALHO and J.N. OLIVEIRA. ELPUB'12, 2012. (Paper,Slides)

Media: WikiScore: Universidade do Minho criou uma "Wikipedia" para a música. In P3, Publico, 15/06/2012.

Developers: N. Carvalho, J.J. Almeida, J.N. Oliveira, A. Simões (all DIUM). ABC support: Guido Gonzato (Univ. Verona). Musicologist: Elisa Lessa (ILCH). Technical support: J.L. Faria (DIUM).

• Visit Contacts

• abcm2ps for creating PS documents from an ABC source
• abc2midi for creating Midi files from an ABC sources
• DokuWiki the wiki used
• ABC Plugin for DokuWiki for music displaying
• EasyABC - open source ABC editor for Windows, OSX and Linux

Wiki-Score acknowledges the support of the following institutions.