About kernpy¶

The Project¶

kernpy is a Python toolkit for processing symbolic music notation in Humdrum kern format**. It enables researchers, musicians, and developers to work with digital music scores programmatically.

The project bridges the gap between the rich Humdrum ecosystem and modern Python development, making it easy to parse, analyze, transform, and export musical data.

The Team¶

kernpy is developed and maintained by the Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence Group (PRAIG) at the University of Alicante, Spain.

Affiliations¶

License¶

kernpy is distributed under the AGPL-3.0-only license. This means:

See the full license for details.

Citation¶

If you use kernpy in academic research, please cite it:

@inproceedings{kernpy_cerveto_mec_2025,
  title        = {kernpy: a Humdrum **Kern Oriented Python Package for Optical Music Recognition Tasks},
  author       = {Cerveto-Serrano, Joan and Rizo, David and Calvo-Zaragoza, Jorge},
  editor       = {Lewis, David and Plaksin, Anna and Stremel, Sophie},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of the Music Encoding Conference 2025},
  year         = {2025},
  address      = {London, United Kingdom},
  publisher    = {Knowledge Commons},
  doi          = {10.17613/qhvtd-hkv52},
}

See Citation for more citation formats.

Contributing¶

We welcome contributions from the community! You can:

Report bugs and request features on GitHub Issues
Contribute code via pull requests
Improve documentation
Share use cases and examples

See Contributing Guide for detailed instructions on setting up your development environment and submitting contributions.

Funding and Support¶

kernpy development is supported by:

University of Alicante — Infrastructure, research time
Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence Group (PRAIG) — Active development and maintenance

If your organization uses kernpy and would like to sponsor development, please reach out to the team at PRAIG.

kernpy builds on the foundation of the Humdrum Toolkit:

Humdrum Toolkit — Original **kern format specification and tools
Humdrum Online — Interactive Humdrum tutorials

Other music notation libraries:

music21 — Python music analysis library
MuseScore — Music notation software
Lilypond — Music notation system

Research¶

PRAIG conducts research in:

Music information retrieval
Pattern recognition in music
Machine learning for music analysis
Digital humanities

Find publications and research at PRAIG website.

Contact¶

GitHub: OMR-PRAIG-UA-ES/kernpy
Issues: Report bugs or request features
PRAIG Website: https://praig.ua.es/
University of Alicante: https://www.ua.es/

Acknowledgments¶

We thank:

The Humdrum community for the **kern specification and tools
Contributors who have reported issues and submitted improvements
Users who have provided feedback and use cases
The open source community for tools and libraries that kernpy depends on

Version History¶

1.6.0 (current) — Modernized API, enhanced documentation
See all releases on GitHub