I mostly researched and tried different things with MIDI files that I got from MuseScore. There were several challenges that I discovered:

1. How to convert MIDI files to MusicXML files
2. MIDI files don’t contain right hand/left hand information

In order to evaluate performance score from user input, I need the corresponding MusicXML that I can compare with the original MusicXML file that I passed to Raspberry Pi. However, keyboard’s user input is transferred to computer as a MIDI file, so I need to convert it to an XML file. It will take a long time for me to create a software that does this conversion, so I researched if there are any external Python libraries that I can use.  I wasn’t able to find one yet but found out that MuseScore’s application can easily do this conversion. Nevertheless, this also led to a new problem that If this application is required for our project, users should download it. Because this MuseScore application is open source, I have been reading their source code to find a way to integrate it to our project, but yet unsure how exactly I can do it. I am planning to talk to the professor next week to ask what other ways I can resolve this problem.

Because I received MIDI cable on Friday, I wasn’t able to get the actual MIDI files from our keyboard. Instead, I downloaded some example MIDI files from MuseScore and learned a bit about them. After converting them to MusicXML files, I realized that it doesn’t contain any information about right hand or left hand, which is quite important while evaluating the performance scores. I think it is impossible to get this data from keyboard, so using different colored LEDs on Surbhi’s side can at least give hand information to users.

I also had a short meeting with Surbhi and talked about which data from musicXML file is useful from her side. I learned a bit more about division/duration parts of musicXML, and figured out that both OMR and hardware side don’t require division/duration information. This is possible because we are letting users to choose bpm of the piece that they’ll play, which automatically determines the duration of the notes.

We had design review presentation on Monday and Wednesday, and got feedback from TAs and the professor. Based on that, we are currently working on writing design review report.

I am currently on schedule, and will continue to work on parsing/dealing with MIDI files next week. Moreover, I am planning to get actual MIDI files from our keyboard using the cable that I purchased.