PrediBase - Controlling Semantics of Symbolic Structures in Music

PrediBase is a database management system, capable of handling flexible and open semantic data structures. It was developed with the complexity of musical score notation in mind, as part of the RUBATO performance workstation. The high demands of the classical musical score relative to handling polymorphy and polysemy of data are satisfied by a unique design, developed according to perceptions of structuralist semiology and predicate logic. Moreover, the possibilities given by logical and geometric motivation allow for new ways to retrive, inspect and relate the data at hand. 2 Introduction The representation and processing of musical score data is an often discussed issue in the field of computing musicology and algorithmic composition. Problems do not only arise when capturing music with a given set of predefined signs, but also when translating these signs into a machine readable and processible format. This is due to the context dependent semantic flexions and indeterminations inhe..