Welcome to the ELVIS database, one of the largest online repositories of symbolic musical data. Here you can search for music in different file formats—including MEI, MusicXML, MIDI, and others—and download pieces to analyze with softward such as music21. You can also contribute to the database by uploading your own files. To access the database, you must register on this page. Registration is free and open to everyone.

Detailed metadata accompanies files on the database, including fields such as date and place of composition, musical genre, and instrumentation. This metadata allows users to easily search for and download groupings of works: for example, all of the database’s’ MusicXML files of sacred vocal music composed in Italy in the sixteenth century. Some files have already been organized into collections, for example the Palestrina Masses collection and the Machaut Collection (click here for a list of all of the collections in the database).

ELVIS stands for Electronic Locator of Vertical Interval Successions. The ELVIS project was originally funded by a Digging into Data Challenge grant; it is now the search and analysis branch of the Single Interface for Music Score Searching and Analysis project (SIMSSA). Both ELVIS and SIMSSA are based at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

The ELVIS database began in January 2012. McGill students, faculty and postdocs have been responsible for database design and maintenance and have also uploaded the majority of the music on the database.

If you have any questions or comments about the ELVIS database, please email elvisdatabase@gmail.com