music-encoding.org

The Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) organizes the Music Encoding Conference (MEC), an annual event that brings together the community working on encoding musical documents in machine-readable form. The music-encoding.org site maintains a dedicated Conference section covering upcoming meetings, past conferences, published proceedings, awards, and hosting information. If you want to attend, present, or bid to host a future MEC, that section is the starting point.

Upcoming conference: MEC 2027

According to the site's news listing, MEC 2027 will take place 7–10 June 2027 in Rome, Italy, at the German Historical Institute (Deutsches Historisches Institut). The Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra is acting as a partner and provides an additional venue.

The news item is dated Aug 25, 2026, so details such as the call for papers, registration, and program are likely to be added closer to the event. Check the Conference section rather than relying on the news post alone for logistics.

What the Conference section contains

The site groups conference-related material into several areas:

Using past conferences and proceedings

If your goal is research rather than attendance, the Past Conferences and Proceedings pages are the most useful entries. Proceedings let you see the kind of work presented at MEC and cite it directly; past conference pages give you the venues, dates, and scope of earlier meetings, which helps you judge whether a future edition fits your topic.

Proposing to host

Institutions interested in hosting a future MEC should read the Hosting Guidelines first, then use the MOU Template when formalizing an arrangement. These two documents define the expectations on both sides, so review them before approaching the MEI Board.

Related community channels

Conference activity sits within the broader MEI community structure, which also includes Community Contacts, Community Forums, Interest Groups, the Technical Team, and the MEI Board. For announcements and discussion around MEC, the News/Events listings and the community forums are the places to watch.

The MEI schema is the core set of rules that defines how musical documents are encoded in machine-readable XML, while the MEI Guidelines are the companion documentation that explains each component of the MEI model and offers best-practice suggestions. You need both: the schema tells you what is structurally valid, and the Guidelines tell you how to use that structure well. This applies to anyone encoding music notation documents — librarians, historians, theorists, and technologists — who want a shared, community-defined standard rather than a one-off format.

The MEI schema

The Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) is a community-driven, open-source effort to define a system for encoding musical documents in a machine-readable structure. Its results are formalized in the MEI schema, described on the site as:

• A core set of rules for recording the physical and intellectual characteristics of music notation documents
• Expressed as an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) schema

In practice, the schema is what you validate against. If you write an MEI file, the schema determines which elements and attributes are permitted and how they may nest. It is the machine-checkable contract.

The MEI Guidelines

The MEI Guidelines complement the schema. According to the site, they provide:

• Detailed explanations of the components of the MEI model
• Best-practice suggestions for encoding

Where the schema answers "is this allowed?", the Guidelines answer "is this the right way to represent what I mean?" — for example, how to choose between encoding approaches for a given notational feature.

How they work together

A practical workflow: read the relevant Guidelines section to decide how to represent a feature, write the encoding, then validate it against the schema to confirm structural correctness.

Where to find versions and resources

The site organizes its resources so you can pick the version that fits your project:

• MEI 5 — the current release line
• Development versions — for work tracking upcoming changes
• Previous versions — for compatibility with older projects
• Archive — historical material

Alongside these, the site lists Schemas and Namespace, Tools, Tutorials, and Documentation, plus background material such as a Bibliography, Pedagogy & Praxis, and the MEI Logo.

Getting involved

MEI is co-hosted by the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur (Mainz) and the RISM Digital Center (Bern). If you want to become an active member, the site points to information on the MEI community and how to join. Development happens on GitHub, where you can submit issues or make pull requests to solve them. Community channels include contacts, forums, and interest groups, and there is an annual Music Encoding Conference — MEC 2027 is scheduled for 7–10 June 2027 at the German Historical Institute in Rome, Italy, with the Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra as a partner and additional venue.

The Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) website, music-encoding.org, gathers its learning and reference material under a single Resources section in the main navigation. From there you can reach Tutorials, Documentation, Pedagogy & Praxis, Schemas and Namespace, and Tools, plus background material such as the Bibliography and MEI Logo. If you want to learn MEI, start with Tutorials for hands-on practice, use Documentation and the MEI Guidelines for reference, and turn to Pedagogy & Praxis if you teach or design coursework around music encoding.

What each resource area gives you

The site describes MEI as a community-driven, open-source effort to define a system for encoding musical documents in a machine-readable structure. The results are formalized in the MEI schema, a core set of rules expressed as an XML schema, complemented by the MEI Guidelines, which explain the components of the MEI model and offer best-practice suggestions. That split matters when you are choosing where to look: the schema tells you what is structurally allowed, while the Guidelines explain how and why to use it.

Finding the right schema version

Under Schemas and Namespace the site separates:

• MEI 5 — the current release line
• Development versions — work in progress
• Previous versions — earlier releases
• Archive — historical material

If you are following a tutorial or reproducing someone else's encoding, check which version it targets before downloading a schema. A file valid against one version is not automatically valid against another, and the development versions are not the same as the stable release.

Who each entry point suits

• Music researchers and historians — start with Background and Bibliography for scholarly context, then Tutorials to encode source material.
• Librarians — Documentation and Schemas and Namespace for cataloguing and metadata work; Tools for conversion and validation.
• Technologists — Schemas and Namespace plus Tools, and the GitHub repository for issues and pull requests.
• Instructors and students — Pedagogy & Praxis for teaching material, supported by Tutorials.

Getting involved beyond reading

The site lists Community entry points including Community Contacts, Community Forums, Interest Groups, the Technical Team, and the MEI Board. There is also an Institutional Membership option with Sponsor Levels, and governance documents such as the MEI By-laws and Code of Conduct. Development happens on GitHub, where you can submit issues or make pull requests. Conferences are another route into the community: MEC 2027 is scheduled for 7–10 June 2027 at the German Historical Institute in Rome, Italy, with the Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra as a partner and additional venue. Past Conferences, Proceedings, and MEC Awards are also listed.

Practical starting path

1. Open the Resources section from the main navigation.
2. Read Documentation and the MEI Guidelines to understand the model.
3. Work through Tutorials with a small piece of music you already know well.
4. Download the matching schema from Schemas and Namespace and validate your file.
5. Use Tools for conversion or checking, and ask in the Community Forums when something does not validate.

The site does not state pricing for membership or sponsorship on the pages summarized here, so check the Institutional Membership and Sponsor Levels pages directly if cost matters for your decision.

You can participate in the Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) at several levels: follow community contacts and forums, join interest groups, contribute code or issues on GitHub, or have your institution become a member or sponsor. The right path depends on whether you are an individual researcher, a developer, or acting for an institution. The MEI site lists these channels under its Community section, alongside governance information such as the MEI Board, Technical Team, by-laws, and code of conduct.

Individual participation channels

The MEI website groups its community entry points under Community:

• Community Contacts — named people to reach out to
• Community Forums — discussion spaces
• Interest Groups — topic-focused groups within MEI
• News / Events — announcements and conferences

If you want to become an active MEI member, the site invites you to read more about the MEI community and how to join. Start with the Community Contacts and Forums pages to see which group matches your interest, then use the Interest Groups listing to find a working group.

Contributing to MEI development

MEI is described as a community-driven, open-source effort, and development happens on GitHub. The site explicitly invites contributions in two forms:

• Submitting issues — reporting problems or proposing changes
• Making pull requests — solving those issues with concrete changes

This is the most direct route for technologists, encoders, and anyone working with the MEI schema or Guidelines. Before contributing, review the Code of Conduct, which the site lists under Community.

Institutional membership and sponsorship

Institutions have separate options, listed under Community:

• Institutional Membership
• Sponsor Levels

These are the formal ways for an organization to support MEI. The site does not publish pricing or payment details in the material available here, so contact the community through the listed channels to ask about current terms.

Governance and how decisions are made

MEI's organizational structure is documented on the site, which helps you understand who to approach and how changes are decided:

MEI is co-hosted by the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, and the RISM Digital Center, Bern.

Conferences and events

The Music Encoding Conference (MEC) is the recurring community event. The site lists MEC 2027, taking place 7–10 June 2027 at the German Historical Institute (Deutsches Historisches Institut) in Rome, Italy, with the Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra as a partner and additional venue. The Community section also links to past conferences, proceedings, MEC awards, hosting guidelines, and an MOU template — useful if you are considering hosting or presenting.

A practical starting sequence

1. Read the Community pages (Contacts, Forums, Interest Groups) to find your fit.
2. Review the Code of Conduct before engaging.
3. For technical work, go to GitHub and either open an issue or submit a pull request.
4. For institutional support, look at Institutional Membership and Sponsor Levels, then contact the community for current details.
5. Watch News / Events for the next MEC and other gatherings.

music-encoding.org is the home of the Music Encoding Initiative, a community-driven, open-source effort to define a system for encoding musical documents in a machine-readable structure. It is the place to go if you want the MEI schema, the MEI Guidelines, tutorials, tools, or information about the MEI community and its conferences. The site is co-hosted by the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz and the RISM Digital Center in Bern.

What MEI actually is

MEI brings together specialists from various music research communities — technologists, librarians, historians, and theorists — to define best practices for representing a broad range of musical documents and structures. Those discussions are formalized in two complementary products:

• The MEI schema — a core set of rules for recording the physical and intellectual characteristics of music notation documents, expressed as an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) schema.
• The MEI Guidelines — detailed explanations of the components of the MEI model, plus best-practice suggestions.

In short: the schema defines what is structurally allowed, and the Guidelines explain how to use it well.

What you can find on the site

The site is organized around a few recurring areas:

Who runs it and how to take part

MEI is co-hosted by the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur (Mainz) and the RISM Digital Center (Bern). If you want to become an active MEI member, the site invites you to read more about the MEI community and how to join. Development happens on GitHub, where you can contribute by submitting issues or making pull requests to solve them.

Conferences and news

The site publishes news and event information. One current example: MEC 2027, the Music Encoding Conference 2027, will take place 7–10 June 2027 at the German Historical Institute (Deutsches Historisches Institut) in Rome, Italy. The Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra is acting as a partner and an additional venue in support of the conference.

When this site is the right starting point

• You need the MEI schema or Guidelines to encode a musical document in XML.
• You want tutorials or tools before committing to a workflow.
• You are looking for the MEI community — forums, interest groups, membership, or the code of conduct.
• You want conference information, proceedings, or hosting guidelines for a future MEC.

If your goal is simply to read about music encoding as a topic rather than to encode anything, the Background and Bibliography sections under Resources are the more relevant entry points than the schema itself.