music21 is a set of tools for helping scholars and other active listeners answer questions about music quickly and simply. It’s a Python-based toolkit for computer-aided musicology.
People use music21 to answer questions from musicology using computers, to study large datasets of music, to generate musical examples, to teach fundamentals of music theory, to edit musical notation, study music and the brain, and to compose music (both algorithmically and directly).
music21 builds on preexisting frameworks and technologies such as Humdrum, MusicXML, MuseData, MIDI, and Lilypond but music21 uses an object-oriented skeleton that makes it easier to handle complex data. But at the same time music21 tries to keep its code clear and make reusing existing code simple.
music21 can be simple to use but it is also very powerful. To use music21, some familiarity with the “Python” programming language is needed.
The development of music21 is supported by the Seaver Institute and the NEH. The project is based at M.I.T. in the Music and Theater Arts section.
Website: web.mit.edu/music21
Support: Blog, Mailing List, GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Michael Scott Cuthbert and cuthbertLab
License: BSD (3-clause) license. Music21 may also be used under the LGPL license
music21 is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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