Date: Mar. 7, 2001
Link: http://www.4ml.org/pr/main.html
Source Author or Organization: Leo Montgomery

Music and Lyrics Markup Language (4ML) is an XML application for music description. Rather than being an abstraction of music notation, 4ML is an abstraction of sound itself. This approach is intended to lose less information between translations, while having fewer limitations when dealing with non-Western music systems or alternate tuning styles. The language is also able to reuse groups of notes, saving work for the user by taking advantage of the repetition in music.

4ML is designed to be a platform-independent solution for musicians and programmers, with applications for writing songs as guitar tablature, playing music over speakers, producing Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) files, or displaying lyrics dynamically.

The 4ML site provides links to documentation, a Frequently Asked Questions digest (FAQ), samples, song libraries.