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Main Authors: Zhao, Jiahao, Li, Yunjia, Li, Wei, Yoshii, Kazuyoshi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23350
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author Zhao, Jiahao
Li, Yunjia
Li, Wei
Yoshii, Kazuyoshi
author_facet Zhao, Jiahao
Li, Yunjia
Li, Wei
Yoshii, Kazuyoshi
contents As large language models continue to develop, the feasibility and significance of text-based symbolic music tasks have become increasingly prominent. While symbolic music has been widely used in generation tasks, LLM capabilities in understanding and reasoning about symbolic music remain largely underexplored. To address this gap, we propose ABC-Eval, the first open-source benchmark dedicated to the understanding and instruction-following capabilities in text-based ABC notation scores. It comprises 1,086 test samples spanning 10 sub-tasks, covering scenarios from basic musical syntax comprehension to complex sequence-level reasoning. Such a diverse scope poses substantial challenges to models' ability to handle symbolic music tasks. We evaluated seven state-of-the-art LLMs on ABC-Eval, and the results reveal notable limitations in existing models' symbolic music processing capabilities. Furthermore, the consistent performance of individual baselines across different sub-tasks supports the reliability of our benchmark.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_23350
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publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ABC-Eval: Benchmarking Large Language Models on Symbolic Music Understanding and Instruction Following
Zhao, Jiahao
Li, Yunjia
Li, Wei
Yoshii, Kazuyoshi
Sound
Artificial Intelligence
As large language models continue to develop, the feasibility and significance of text-based symbolic music tasks have become increasingly prominent. While symbolic music has been widely used in generation tasks, LLM capabilities in understanding and reasoning about symbolic music remain largely underexplored. To address this gap, we propose ABC-Eval, the first open-source benchmark dedicated to the understanding and instruction-following capabilities in text-based ABC notation scores. It comprises 1,086 test samples spanning 10 sub-tasks, covering scenarios from basic musical syntax comprehension to complex sequence-level reasoning. Such a diverse scope poses substantial challenges to models' ability to handle symbolic music tasks. We evaluated seven state-of-the-art LLMs on ABC-Eval, and the results reveal notable limitations in existing models' symbolic music processing capabilities. Furthermore, the consistent performance of individual baselines across different sub-tasks supports the reliability of our benchmark.
title ABC-Eval: Benchmarking Large Language Models on Symbolic Music Understanding and Instruction Following
topic Sound
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23350