Managing Music in Orchestras

An electronic music management system may provide musicians, music publishers, and music schools with an unprecedented ability to create, update, and store expertly annotated scores. Given the shortcomings of renting printed scores, many performing organizations and publishers could benefit from an alternative that makes possible the storage of multiple versions and greatly reduces the amount of repetitive work involved. We have developed such a system: the Music Object-Oriented Distributed System. MOODS’ main features and benefits include the ability to • reduce the time needed for modifying main scores and parts during rehearsals; • manage (load, modify, and save) instrumental and personal symbols on main scores and parts; • manage and reproduce the exact execution rate at which each measure of a score has been performed; • automate page turning during rehearsals and final performances; • visualize in only a few minutes scores that usually must be retrieved from the theater archive and copied or adjusted by hand before being placed on musicians’ lecterns; • change music pieces quickly or restart from marked points; and • manipulate the main score and all instrument parts as a full music score in real time. We specifically designed MOODS to meet the needs of theaters and symphony halls, itinerant orchestras, musician groups, music schools, television network orchestras, and music pu