A geometric language for representing structure in polyphonic music

Research output: Contribution to book/anthology/report/conference proceedingArticle in proceedingResearchpeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)
284 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

In 1981, Deutsch and Feroe proposed a formal language for representing melodic pitch structure that employed the powerful concept of hierarchically-related pitch alphabets. However, neither rhythmic structure nor pitch structure in polyphonic music can be adequately represented using this language. A new language is proposed here that incorporates certain features of Deutsch and Feroe’s model but extends and generalises it to allow for the representation of both rhythm and pitch structure in polyphonic music. The new language adopts a geometric approach in which a passage of polyphonic music is represented as a set of multidimensional points, generated by performing transformations on component patterns. The language introduces the concept of a periodic mask, a generalisation of Deutsch and Feroe’s notion of a pitch alphabet, that can be applied to any dimension of a geometric representation, allowing for both rhythms and pitch collections to be represented parsimoniously in a uniform way.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 13th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, 2012
Number of pages6
Place of PublicationPorto
PublisherFaculadade de Engenharia Universidade do Porto (FEUP)
Publication date2012
ISBN (Print)978‐972‐752‐144‐9
Publication statusPublished - 2012
EventInternational Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference - Porto, Portugal
Duration: 8 Oct 201212 Oct 2012
Conference number: 13

Conference

ConferenceInternational Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference
Number13
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityPorto
Period08/10/201212/10/2012

Keywords

  • music theory
  • computational musicology
  • computational music analysis
  • music information retrieval
  • music cognition
  • computer music

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A geometric language for representing structure in polyphonic music'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this