project-proposal-2025

Transpologist

Abstract

For the music enthusiasts among us, you may be familiar with the various pains and trials of dealing with sheet music. Finding the correct piece can be painful and even when you do, it’s often for the wrong instrument or in the wrong key. You might even have your own sheet music and you wish to adjust a minor thing. Now you find yourself typing note-by-note into musescore taking hours of your time.

Transpologist lets you upload sheet music in multiple file formats, including images, for transposition, playback, and export in a standardised file, such as MusicXML, which is compatible with other editors such as MuseScore and Sibelius. Though not a full music editor, it focuses on key and clef changes. You can also choose to contribute your sheet music to a public library for others to browse or use.

Author

Name: Ella Berglas

Student number: 47425381

Functionality

Features

• File Upload
  • Take various file formats including .mxl, .pdf, .png and musescore’s .mscx, .mscz
  • Image processing and recognition.
• Audio Playback
  • Be able to play the sheet music out loud through an ausio player.
• Transposition
  • Let the user change the key of the music as well as the clef.
• File Download
  • Let users download their editted or new file format.
  • Let users download the audio file associated with the sheet music.
• Public Music Library
  • Let users upload files to the public library.
  • Let users browse, download, play and transpose music from the library.
  • May also include some type of searching.
• Account System
  • Let users make an account to upload files to the library.
• Authentication
  • To stop bots and similar from overloading the system.

Example Workflows

For uploading a file:

For browsing the library:

Scope

The MVP should be able to:

• Upload sheet music.
  • Can take in a music XML file.
  • Can take in a pdf or png image and convert it to sheet music.
    • Check out Audiveris or similar.
• Display/preview the sheet music.
• Transpose the sheet music (i.e. move every note up and down a semitone).
• Play the sheet music out loud.
• Download
  • Download the sheet music as a standardised file that is compatible with other music editors.
  • Download the audio file.
• Public Library
  • Allow users to share to a public library
    • Account system is optional.

Quality Attributes

Extensibility

There are both many oppotunities for adding new features over time and changing existing features. It is very likley that some existing featuers will be updated to be more reliable or have better performance. This includes reading in the sheet music from an image. There are also a few applications of ML and AI that may be used within the software. As this is a continuously evolving feild, it is important that changes and updates can be made to this without drastically effecting the existing system.

Extra features that the project would likely expand to could include: adding an interactive music note editor, use of specific instruments for the synthesizer, implement ML and AI music suggestions, allowing for audio input as well as being able to change the font size and page layout.

Modularity

Due to the numerous and various ways this software can be used, it is important to have the software be modular. Someone may only want to read in the file from an image, or upload an existing MusicXML file and just transpose it or listen to it etc. It is therefor important that each feature can be used independently from the others. Furthermore, this is important for improving existing features such as the service that reads the music from a pdf or the music player. It is important to have a modular system so that any changes or upgrades to these services do not disrupt the existing features. Modularity is importact as it helps with extensibility and testability and can keep the system simply and potentially minimise security risks.

Interopability

Interoperability ensures that all features/ services can exchange and share data easily. This is crucial as majority of the features need access to the music data and any updates to it. This may present a slight tradeoff between modularity and interopability. It is important that we allow for all the features to work reliably and appropriately while keeping the systems as modular as possible. There are also oppotunities for caching data to make a faster user experience that may need to be considered.

Security

Security should be considered throughout the entire process of the architecural design for every system. It is crucial for Transpologist to consider security from the very beginning and throughout implementation. As we are taking input files from the user, there needs to be many checks and validation of these files. Furthermore, if implementing without an account system, there should be some sort of human authentication system which provides resilience from overloading attacks.

Evaluation

The following criteria is used to determine if you have achieved implementing the key quality attributes for the project:

Extensibility

• The system should be built in a way that adding new features should not hugley impact the existing system.
• When building the system and adding in features such as the audio player or tranposition shouldn’t effect the funcitonality of the rest of the system.
• Achieve low coupling and have few dependencies between features/ services.
• Make the system modular (see below).

Modularity

• Each feature can be used independently from the others (within reason - obviously to play the sheet music you will need to upload a file).
• The system should still be able to function if a feature is removed.
  • E.g. removing the sheet music preview should still allow audio to play, transposing to occur and downloading to be reliable and work properly.
• A feature should be able to be changed or improved upon without drastically impacting the rest of the system.
• The system should be as modular as possible while still allowing for effective communication between components.

Interopability

• When changes are made or the file is uploaded, other features that need this information should be notified/ updated.
• If the key or clef is changed then the display, audio player and downloaded file should reflect that.
• Note that if a file is used from the public library, any updates a user has made to transpose it shoulod not effect the original file in the library.
• Sharing data between the systems should be secure and fault resilient.

Security

• There should be file validation and checks in place for file upload.
• There should be some sort of human identification checks to prevent overloading by bots.
• All inputs to the system from the user should be resilient against sql injection attacks.
• Sensitive information should be handled with care and follow the Australian Pirvacy Act 1988.
• Music that is not part of the public library should be secure and hidden from other users.