It&#x27;s just a bit of markup over ASCII abstractions of musical notation. It looks foreign because you didn&#x27;t study the syntax (just like &lt;?php ?&gt; would look foreign to anyone not familiar with PHP) and don&#x27;t know the musical conventions.<p>E.g.:<p>- Notes are letter notation[0] plus ASCII abstractions over duration symbols[1].<p>- Tempo assignment is just &quot;130 =&gt; )&quot;, which means there are 130 &quot;)&quot; (quarter notes) per minute.<p>- |: foo :| repeats, which looks like the repeat symbol[2] in a score.<p>- Dynamics are the same as traditional notation[3], with an alternative level notation (which looks just like a digital VU meter[4]).<p>- Conditionals are pretty much the ternary operator.<p>There&#x27;s not much else going on. Compare with MML[5] which looks foreign even if familiar with musical notation.<p>Of course you could ask why traditional music notation is so dense (probably more than this, compare letter notation &quot;Cdim&quot; with how you&#x27;d write it in a staff[6]).<p>Musical notation is dense because you have to convey a lot of information in a very small space (less switching pages while performing) and, well, because when you have to write by hand you become lazy (just like copyist monks had their own shorthands).<p>Sometimes the notation is also better at conveying information: in the &quot;Cdim&quot; example, when laid out in a staff, I can quickly see it&#x27;s composed of a bass note C plus 2 triads, with both 3rd and 5th being flat, which makes it a diminished triad chord. You can invert the chord (take the bass note up one octave) and it&#x27;d still convey lots of information, while letter notation starts to get complicated (Cdim&#x2F;Eb, which isn&#x27;t that easy to read since you have to calculate in your head that Eb is the 3rd therefore the chord is inverted once).<p>Fortunately we humans are very good at reading notation as soon as we&#x27;re familiar with it :)<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Letter_notation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Letter_notation</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_musical_symbols#Notes_and_rests" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_musical_symbols#Notes_...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Repeat_sign" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Repeat_sign</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dynamics_%28music%29" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dynamics_%28music%29</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;securethumbs.ebay.com&#x2F;d&#x2F;l225&#x2F;m&#x2F;mcuRjwssh-op30lD6M7asow.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;securethumbs.ebay.com&#x2F;d&#x2F;l225&#x2F;m&#x2F;mcuRjwssh-op30lD6M7as...</a><p>[5] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Music_Macro_Language" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Music_Macro_Language</a><p>[6] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;7&#x2F;79&#x2F;Diminished_triad_on_C.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;7&#x2F;79&#x2F;Diminish...</a>