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Installing Music21

Music21 can be installed with a number of different methods. We give two different options depending on if you are a PC (Windows) or Mac (OS X) / Linux / Unix user.

Windows Install instructions

1A. Get Python

Python is a simple but powerful programming language that music21 is written in and in which you will write your own programs that use music21.

Whereas many operating systems come with Python, Windows does not. Windows users will need to download and install Python version 2.6 (or 2.7, 2.8, etc. but NOT 3.0 or above).

Go to http://www.python.org/download/ and click on the “Windows installer” link. It is probably the first link. Save the file to your desktop and then click on it there.

To test to see if Python has been installed properly, go to the start menu and run (either by clicking “Run” in older Windows or by typing in the search box) IDLE. Type 2+2. If your system then displays 4 you’ve installed everything properly so far.

1B. Updating Python

If you have already installed Python on your computer, launch IDLE (a Python interpreter and code editor) by clicking the start menu and clicking Run (on Windows XP or older) and typing in “IDLE” or (on Windows Vista and newer) typing in “IDLE” in the Search Programs list.

The first lines of text displayed will include a version number. Make sure it begins with 2.6.0 or higher, but not 3.0 or 3.1, etc.

If your version is too old, download a newer version as above.

2. Download music21

Download the most-recent music21 package from the following URL:

http://code.google.com/p/music21/downloads/list

Windows users should download the .exe file to their desktops and then click on it.

3. Install music21

Windows installation is easy. After downloading the music21.exe installer, click on it on your desktop, then follow and accept the prompts for default install options. This installer simply copies files into the Python site-packages directory. If the installer quits without further notice the installation has been successful.

To test to see if music21 has been installed properly, go to the start menu and run (either by clicking “Run” in older Windows or by typing in the search box) IDLE. Type “import music21“. If your system waits for a few seconds and then displays “>>>” you’ve installed everything properly. (If the system cannot find music21 then you may have more than one version of Python on your system. Try uninstalling all of them along with music21 and then restarting from scratch).

After a successful installation, proceed to Quick Start: Getting Started with music21 to begin using music21, or skip ahead to Installing Additional Python Components below.

Mac OS X / Linux / Unix Install instructions

1. Check your version of Python

Python is a simple but powerful programming language that music21 is written in and in which you will write your own programs that use music21.

Mac OS X comes with Python, but it might not be a new enough version to run music21. Music21 requires Python 2.6 to run (though many functions can run on 2.5 or 2.4). Python 3 is not yet supported.

To determine the Python version you have installed, open a shell or terminal by going to Applications, then Utilities, and then double clicking “Terminal” (if you have xterm installed, that will work fine too) and enter the following command-line argument (don’t type the “$”)

$ python -V

it should display something like:

Python 2.6.2

if so, you’re okay. If not, go to http://www.python.org/download and download a newer version. Multiple versions of Python can exist on a single computer without any problems.

2. Download music21

Download the most-recent music21 package from the following URL.

http://code.google.com/p/music21/downloads/list

Linux / Mac OS X users should download the .tar.gz file.

3. Install Music21

After downloading the music21 toolkit, the package is installed like any other Python extension library. Python stores extension libraries in a directory called ‘site-packages’. The site-packages directory is located in different places depending on your platform. To find where your site-packages directory is located, you can enter the following command in the Python interpreter:

>>> import distutils.sysconfig
>>> print(distutils.sysconfig.get_python_lib())

First, uncompress the .tar.gz file.

Open a shell or terminal (e.g. Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal), enter the outer-most music21 directory (using cd), and use python to execute the setup.py file with the ‘install’ argument:

$ cd /path/to/dir/music21-version
$ python setup.py install

On Mac OS X, and possibly on other systems, you may need special permission to write in the Python site-packages directory. An easy way to temporarily gain this permission is to use the sudo command. If the above returns a permissions error, try the following:

$ sudo python setup.py install

If you cannot gain permission to install music21 in the Python site-packages directory, you can still run and use music21. Place the music21 folder anywhere convenient and note the file path. Start Python, and add this file path to Python’s list of directories searched for modules:

>>> import sys
>>> sys.path.append('/Users/ariza/Desktop/music21')
>>>

This can be done permanently by adding the music21 directory to the Python PYTHONPATH environment variable. This is not necessary if music21 is installed in the Python site-packages directory. See the following link for more details:

http://docs.python.org/using/cmdline.html#envvar-PYTHONPATH

After successful installation, proceed to Quick Start: Getting Started with music21 to begin using music21.

Installing Additional Python Components

Additional functionality of music21, such as plotting graphs, is available with the installation of additional Python libraries. The following topics cover additional software used by music21. For each library, visit the websites listed below, download the additional python libraries, and install them just as you did with music21 above. If you don’t feel like installing them now, no worries: you can always install them later.

Python Imaging Library (PIL)

The Python Imaging Library provides resources for transforming and editing graphics files. Without this library, the output from Lilypond is less good.

http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil

Matplotlib

Graphing and visual displays in Music21 are provided by Matplotlib. Matplotlib itself has additional dependencies (such as SciPy). Please read the detailed instructions in the link below.

http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net

Installing Additional Software Components

Additional functionality of Music21 is available with the installation of numerous helper applications. While not essential for all applications, these tools will aid in working with Music21.

MuseScore

MuseScore offers a free, full-featured, cross-platform (Windows, Mac OS, Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora) application for viewing and editing music notation. MuseScore can import and export MusicXML, and provides an excellent way to view, edit, and export musical data for working in music21. Use of MuseScore is highly recommended for working with music21.

http://www.musescore.org

Finale or Finale Reader

Finale is one of the industry leaders in creating musical scores. It can import MusicXML that music21 generates and let you see, edit, or print these scores for your own use. There is also a free version of Finale, Finale Reader that can load MusicXML files but cannot edit them. The reader is available for Windows and Mac OS computers. Use of Finale or Finale reader is highly recommended for working with music21.

http://www.finalemusic.com/Reader

On Windows, after you install Finale or Finale Reader, you will probably want to associate .xml files so that they are automatically opened by Finale or Finale Reader. To do so download http://web.mit.edu/music21/blank.xml to your desktop. Right click the file in on your desktop and click “Open with” then choose “browse”, select c:\Program Files\Finale Reader\Finale Reader.exe (or c:\Programs\Finale\Finale.exe depending on if you’re on Windows Vista or if you’re using Finale vs. Finale Reader), and the check the box for always using this program for opening xml files. (Thanks to Craig Sapp for this missing step)

Lilypond

Lilypond is a free, open-source music display program that can produce beautiful scores. Music21 can generate PDF or PNG (like JPG) files automatically if Lilypond is installed on your system. Download it at:

http://lilypond.org/

Eclipse + PyDev

Eclipse is a free, open-source integrated development environment (IDE), essentially a program that makes writing (and finding bugs in) other programs much easier. Eclipse is set up primarily for editing in Java, but the add-in PyDev makes it extremely powerful for creating Python scripts as well. First download Eclipse at:

http://www.eclipse.org/

Then follow the “Quick Install” instructions in the right-hand column of:

http://pydev.org/download.html

Installation Help

If you have followed these instructions and encounter problems, contact the music21 group for help:

http://groups.google.com/group/music21list

Advanced Topics

For developers and advanced users, anonymous SVN access is available from Google Code. Enter the following command line argument or SVN commands:

svn checkout http://music21.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ music21-read-only

Downloading and Installing Music21 with setuptools or pip

The easiest way to download and install music21 is with one of the powerful automated Python package installers available. This tools can also be used to update an existing music21 installation to the most-recent version.

Automated Installation with setuptools

First, install setuptools:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools

Second, install and/or update music21 with the following command-line argument:

$ sudo easy_install music21

Automated Installation with pip

First, install pip:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pip

Second, install and/or update music21 with the following command-line argument:

$ pip install music21