Notation Interchange File Format (NIFF) is a

music notation Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspec ...

file format used primarily for transferring music notation between different

scorewriter A scorewriter, or music notation program is software for creating, editing and printing sheet music. A scorewriter is to music notation what a word processor is to text, in that they typically provide flexible editing and automatic layout, and pr ...

s. The NIFF project was started in February 1994 to create an open format that would allow exchange of music between various scanning /

Optical music recognition Optical music recognition (OMR) is a field of research that investigates how to computationally read musical notation in documents. The goal of OMR is to teach the computer to read and interpret sheet music and produce a machine-readable version o ...

, editing and typesetting programs. The project was sponsored by several music notation software publishers. The NIFF format itself is based upon

RIFF A riff is a repeated chord progression or refrain in music (also known as an ostinato figure in classical music); it is a pattern, or melody, often played by the rhythm section instruments or solo instrument, that forms the basis or accompanim ...

(Resource Interchange File Format), a file structure provided by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

, in which data is divided into Lists, Chunks and Tags. Almost all data in a NIFF file are optional. The level of detail contained can range from just the pitch and timing (akin to

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, an ...

) to a precise page layout, embedded graphics and embedded MIDI information. Though detailed and comprehensive, the standard never really caught on except for limited interchange between Optical music recognition software and score writing software. Three of the

programs in widespread use – PhotoScore, SharpEye, and

SmartScore SmartScore 64 is a music OCR and scorewriter program, developed, published and distributed by Musitek Corporation based in Ojai, California. History SmartScore was originally released in 1991 as MIDISCAN for Windows. The product line was later c ...

– export NIFF files. NIFF is now considered obsolete mainly due to the

MusicXML MusicXML is an XML-based file format for representing Western musical notation. The format iopen fully documented, and can be freely used under the W3C Community Final Specification Agreement. History MusicXML was invented by Michael Good and in ...

format. As of February 2006 the NIFF project web site has been closed. The NIFF SDK is available a
The NIFF SDK Archive
for educational usage.

Notes and references

{{Reflist, 2

External links

Music notation file formats