hello everybody,

We now have a free encyclopedia. We now have a free library. We now have free pictures. Now we have to *free the music* ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikimania05/Presentation-JW1) and make it available for everyone. But with the preservation of the wiki-idea: publishing music with a free license, or publishing music in the Public Domain.

Let's make a WikiMusic. A Wiki with:

- *both score and text* of a free piece of music - the *music itself* in a playable music file (in different versions, for example one version with trumpet, one with a whole orchestra, not MIDI) - the *sheet music* in a wiki-text format - *information about* the piece of music.

The WikiMusic has to be *user-friendly* as well. So NO WikiMusic just for expert musicians, but also for people who are just looking for a nice work of Beethoven. There has to be a system to *search* in this Wiki in a user-friendly way, too. Maybe the so-called Parsons codehttp://www.musipedia.org/pcnop.0.html( http://www.musipedia.org/pcnop.0.html) can be used?

The WikiMusic wiki has to *allow for growth*. Not just for experts, but rather also for people with little knowledge of the software. Lilypondhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_LilyPondis at the moment still too difficult, too technical, for this purpose. Maybe there are possibilities to make it easier to enter scores into a Wiki. Maybe it is possible to integrate some kind of keyboard (java applet) in the software, and have the software rewrite it into Lilypond-like formats. Perhaps a (java) applet to drag and drop the notes into the score can be developed, so a full score can be reproduced in a Wiki. And that such will be transcribed into the Lilypond format automatically is our dream.

The Wikimusic has to be *editable*. So not just the creation of new scores has to be easy, but also their editing. Maybe some way can be found to change the rather complex format of lilypond into a drag-and-drop idea, so the sheet can be altered easily. Later the sheet can be transcribed into the standard format again.

WikiMusic must, last but not least, be *able to survive*. Not only with its envisioned community, but also with a protection from vandals. It may prove to be be hard to maintain the usual wiki-way here. Some brainstorming about this issue needs to be done. How can vandals be checked best, by a mere possibility of *listening to the differences* perhaps?

You can help with this! Today a proposal is posted on meta ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikimusic_II and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimusic_II), and there are still a lot of technical issues to be solved. Plese add your comment, and get the project on it's way. Every bit of help and comment is welcome. I hope to see you there.

Effeietsanders (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/gebruiker:Effeietsanders and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Effeietsanders)