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"SMUS" IFF Simple Musical Score
Date: February 5, 1986
From: Jerry Morrison, Electronic Arts
Status: Adopted
1. Introduction
This is a reference manual for the data interchange format "SMUS",
which stands for Simple MUsical Score. "EA IFF 85" is Electronic Arts'
standard for interchange format files. A FORM (or "data section")
such as FORM SMUS can be an IFF file or a part of one. [See "EA IFF
85" Electronic Arts Interchange File Format.]
SMUS is a practical data format for uses like moving limited scores
between programs and storing theme songs for game programs. The format
should be geared for easy read-in and playback. So FORM SMUS uses
the compact time encoding of Common Music Notation (half notes, dotted
quarter rests, etc.). The SMUS format should also be structurally
simple. So it has no provisions for fancy notational information needed
by graphical score editors or the more general timing (overlapping
notes, etc.) and continuous data (pitch bends, etc.) needed by
performance-oriented MIDI recorders and sequencers.
A SMUS score can say which "instruments" are supposed play which notes.
But the score is independent of whatever output device and driver
software is used to perform the notes. The score can contain device-
and driver-dependent instrument data, but this is just a cache. As
long as a SMUS file stays in one environment, the embedded instrument
data is very convenient. When you move a SMUS file between programs
or hardware configurations, the contents of this cache usually become
useless.
Like all IFF formats, SMUS is a filed or "archive" format. It is completely
independent of score representations in working memory, editing operations,
user interface, display graphics, computation hardware, and sound
hardware. Like all IFF formats, SMUS is extensible.
SMUS is not an end-all musical score format. Other formats may be
more appropriate for certain uses. (We'd like to design an general-use
IFF score format "GSCR". FORM GSCR would encode fancy notational data
and performance data. There would be a SMUS to/from GSCR converter.)
Section 2 gives important background information. Section 3 details
the SMUS components by defining the required property score header
"SHDR", the optional text properties name "NAME", copyright "(c) ",
and author "AUTH", optional text annotation "ANNO", the optional instrument
specifier "INS1", and the track data chunk "TRAK". Section 4 defines
some chunks for particular programs to store private information.
These are "standard" chunks; specialized chunks for future needs can
be added later. Appendix A is a quick-reference summary. Appendix
B is an example box diagram. Appendix C names the committee responsible
for this standard.
Update: This standard has been revised since the draft versions. The
"INST" chunk type was revised to form the "INS1" chunk type. Also,
several SEvent types and a few text chunk types have been added.
Note: This is a MacWrite[tm] 4.5 document. If you strip it down to a
text file, you'll lose pictures, significant formatting information
like superscripts, and characters like ")". Don't do it.
----------------------------------------------------------------
|(Sorry, EA. We had to strip it down for ease of distribution, |
| but we did convert pictures to text-form and where we could |
| not do that, we provided ILBM illustrations that people |
| could actually show using the standard "showilbm" program) |
----------------------------------------------------------------
References:
"EA IFF 85" Standard for Interchange Format Files describes the underlying
conventions for all IFF files.
"8SVX" IFF 8-Bit Sampled Voice documents a data format for sampled
instruments.
Electronic Arts[tm] is a trademark of Electronic Arts.
MIDI: Musical Instrument Digital Interface Specification 1.0, International
MIDI Association, 1983.
MacWrite[tm] is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc.
SSSP: See various articles on Structured Sound Synthesis Project in
Foundations of Computer Music.