This has my been experience, too. We needed to parse a complex DSL in Lisp and I was hoping we didn't have to use RegEx for all the reasons you mentioned. The p

This has my been experience, too. We needed to parse a complex DSL in Lisp and I was hoping we didn't have to use RegEx for all the reasons you mentioned. The parser combinator we used (MaxPC) brought with it many advantages: readability and small individual parsers were at the top of the list. There was a learning curve in switching to how to think about parser combinators but, once we had tried every single construct in MaxPC and done everything wrong that was possible(!), we learned how to really make the system fly. Now I feel comfortable that we could write a parser for anything with these ideas. And your music notation parser sounds cool.