| --- |
| pretty_name: MuSP-Bench |
| language: |
| - en |
| license: cc-by-nc-sa-4.0 |
| task_categories: |
| - question-answering |
| configs: |
| - config_name: default |
| data_files: |
| - split: test |
| path: data/questions.csv |
| - config_name: ablation |
| data_files: |
| - split: test |
| path: data/ablation.csv |
| --- |
| |
| # MuSP-Bench |
|
|
| MuSP-Bench is a 490-question benchmark for musical score understanding, |
| performance listening, and combined score-performance reasoning. |
|
|
| ## Contents |
|
|
| - `data/questions.csv`: all 490 questions, accepted answers, and the |
| response contract for each. |
| - `data/ablation.csv`: MIDI2 baseline accuracy by model and reporting subset. |
| - `inputs/pdf/without_context/`: one context-removed PDF per piece. |
| - `inputs/images/`: rendered score-page images for every piece. |
| - `inputs/abc/`: one ABC score per piece. |
| - `inputs/abc_plus_midi/`: one aligned ABC+MIDI score-performance representation per piece. |
| - `inputs/midi_performance_event_text/`: one MIDI performance-event-text file per piece. |
| - `inputs/midi2_performance_event_text/`: one MIDI2 numeric-pitch |
| performance-event-text file per piece. |
| - `inputs/audio/`: WAV performances for 21 pieces. The three Blomstedt |
| performances remain in the original BSED release and are linked below. |
|
|
| Each question has associated audio, MIDI and MIDI2 performance event text, |
| ABC, ABC+MIDI, score images, and a metadata-removed PDF. The `audio` field is a |
| relative local path for bundled recordings and an official source URL for the |
| three externally hosted BSED recordings. |
|
|
| ## Input baselines |
|
|
| - **Metadata** supplies contextual information without musical evidence. |
| - **ABC** represents the written score as symbolic text, while **Image** uses |
| rendered score pages and **Audio** uses the performance recording. |
| - **MIDI-as-text (MIDI1)** is a chronological performance-event list containing |
| named pitches, attack velocities, onset times, and acoustic end times. |
| **MIDI2** replaces pitch names with MIDI note numbers. |
| - **ABC+MIDI** preserves the ABC score and aligns each written note with its |
| performed onset, offset, velocity, and pedal state using parallel `%%on`, |
| `%%off`, `%%vel`, and `%%ped` rows. |
| - **Image+audio** and **ABC+audio** pair the corresponding score |
| representation with the recording. |
|
|
| ## Ablation |
|
|
| The `ablation` configuration compares MIDI1, which uses named pitches, with |
| MIDI2, which replaces them with numeric MIDI note values. The numeric encoding |
| substantially reduces overall accuracy for GPT-5.6-sol (55.88% to 29.41%) and |
| both Qwen models, while MuseSpark remains at 34.45%. |
|
|
| | Representation | Model | P | General (S/P) | Tonality/style (S/P) | Composer/title (S/P) | Overall | |
| |---|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:| |
| | MIDI1 | GPT-5.6-sol | 63/106 (59.43%) | 18/36 (50.00%) | 37/48 (77.08%) | 15/48 (31.25%) | 133/238 (55.88%) | |
| | MIDI1 | MuseSpark 1.2 | 28/106 (26.42%) | 11/36 (30.56%) | 32/48 (66.67%) | 11/48 (22.92%) | 82/238 (34.45%) | |
| | MIDI1 | Qwen3.5-Omni-Plus | 12/106 (11.32%) | 5/36 (13.89%) | 19/48 (39.58%) | 0/48 (0.00%) | 36/238 (15.13%) | |
| | MIDI1 | Qwen3.6-Plus | 11/106 (10.38%) | 4/36 (11.11%) | 17/48 (35.42%) | 0/48 (0.00%) | 32/238 (13.45%) | |
| | MIDI2 | GPT-5.6-sol | 34/106 (32.08%) | 11/36 (30.56%) | 25/48 (52.08%) | 0/48 (0.00%) | 70/238 (29.41%) | |
| | MIDI2 | MuseSpark 1.2 | 28/106 (26.42%) | 11/36 (30.56%) | 32/48 (66.67%) | 11/48 (22.92%) | 82/238 (34.45%) | |
| | MIDI2 | Qwen3.5-Omni-Plus | 9/106 (8.49%) | 3/36 (8.33%) | 9/48 (18.75%) | 0/48 (0.00%) | 21/238 (8.82%) | |
| | MIDI2 | Qwen3.6-Plus | 4/106 (3.77%) | 1/36 (2.78%) | 9/48 (18.75%) | 0/48 (0.00%) | 14/238 (5.88%) | |
|
|
| ## IDs and ordering |
|
|
| Rows are ordered by modality, composer, and piece number, then by their |
| underlying span-specific horizon and question order. |
|
|
| For S/P questions, `submodality` is `general`, `tonality/style`, or |
| `composer/title`, following the benchmark's established reporting split. It is |
| blank for S, P, and SP questions. |
|
|
| ## Horizons |
|
|
| - `Short`: one event, up to two measures, or approximately 10 seconds. |
| - `Mid`: 3–16 measures or approximately 10–60 seconds. |
| - `Long`: more than 16 measures, a section, a whole-piece search, or a |
| nonlocal comparison. |
| - `Any`: the question is not constrained to a particular musical span. This is |
| used for S/P `tonality/style` and `composer/title` questions. |
|
|
| ## Modalities |
|
|
| - `S`: answer from the score. |
| - `P`: answer from the performance recording. |
| - `SP`: answer using both score and performance. |
| - `S/P`: answer from either source. |
|
|
| `answerExample` contains JSON-encoded formatting examples. Examples illustrate |
| the requested syntax only and are not answers to the benchmark questions. |
| `answers` contains the JSON-encoded list of accepted ground-truth answers. |
|
|
| ## Sources and attribution |
|
|
| MuSP-Bench is derived from the following source datasets. The released inputs |
| have been selected, cropped or normalized as needed, converted into additional |
| representations, and paired with newly authored benchmark questions and |
| accepted answers. |
|
|
| - **ASAP — Aligned Scores and Performances** (pieces 1–18): Francesco |
| Foscarin, Andrew McLeod, Philippe Rigaux, Florent Jacquemard, and Masahiko |
| Sakai, *ASAP: a dataset of aligned scores and performances for piano |
| transcription*, ISMIR 2020. |
| [Dataset](https://github.com/fosfrancesco/asap-dataset) · |
| [license](https://github.com/fosfrancesco/asap-dataset/blob/master/LICENSE.md) |
| - **MAESTRO v2.0.0**: Curtis Hawthorne, Andriy Stasyuk, Adam Roberts, Ian |
| Simon, Cheng-Zhi Anna Huang, Sander Dieleman, Erich Elsen, Jesse Engel, and |
| Douglas Eck, *Enabling Factorized Piano Music Modeling and Generation with |
| the MAESTRO Dataset*, ICLR 2019. MAESTRO supplies the underlying competition |
| recordings used by the selected ASAP performances. |
| [Dataset and citation](https://magenta.withgoogle.com/datasets/maestro) |
| - **PianoCoRe**: Ilya Borovik, *PianoCoRe: Combined and Refined Piano MIDI |
| Dataset*, TISMIR 2026. PianoCoRe refined alignments were used where available |
| in preparing the piano score/performance representations. |
| [Dataset, citation, and license](https://huggingface.co/datasets/SyMuPe/PianoCoRe) |
| - **BSED — Beethoven Symphony Excerpt Dataset** (pieces 19–24): Hans-Ulrich |
| Berendes, Abhirup Saha, Ben Maman, Vlora Arifi-Müller, and Meinard Müller, |
| *Beethoven Symphony Excerpt Dataset (BSED): An Evaluation Dataset for |
| Orchestral Music Transcription*, TISMIR 2026. |
| [Dataset and citation](https://zenodo.org/records/20344500) |
|
|
| BSED documents that its first three real-audio splits use public-domain IMSLP |
| recordings, while its fourth split uses short excerpts from Herbert Blomstedt |
| CD recordings that are not public domain; those excerpts are distributed by |
| the BSED authors under European scientific quotation and citation provisions. |
| See the [source paper's ethical statement](https://doi.org/10.5334/tismir.343) |
| for details. |
|
|
| The Blomstedt audio is not redistributed in this repository. Download the |
| [official BSED archive](https://zenodo.org/records/20344500/files/BSED.zip?download=1) |
| and use these archive-internal files: |
|
|
| - Piece 19: `02_Audio/wav_44100/BSED-04_4_Beethoven_Op036-01_Blomstedt1978.wav` |
| - Piece 20: `02_Audio/wav_44100/BSED-05_4_Beethoven_Op036-03_Blomstedt1978.wav` |
| - Piece 23: `02_Audio/wav_44100/BSED-18_4_Beethoven_Op093-02_Blomstedt1978.wav` |
|
|
| ## License |
|
|
| MuSP-Bench is released under the |
| [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International |
| license](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). Credit the |
| MuSP-Bench authors and the applicable source datasets above, link the license, |
| and indicate modifications. Underlying third-party rights and applicable |
| copyright exceptions remain unaffected. |
|
|
