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21M.383 | Spring 2023 | Undergraduate, Graduate

# Computational Music Theory and Analysis

Watch the videos below for an introduction to what can be done with a large corpus of lead sheets and texts.

Video 12a: Painting Emotions in Music and Text

In Video 12a, I’ll read my paper with Sophia Sun on this subject. Except for not putting on a tie, I’m presenting this as I would a formal presentation at a conference, with a prepared text and slides that I’m reading almost exclusively from. While it might sound a little more stilted than a class presentation, it can be the best way to present difficult material in a short amount of time. Consider this a model for the short presentations you will give at the end of the term. Note that the video uses some techniques (like automatically detecting the key and mode of a piece) that we have not yet dealt with.

Reading: Sophia Sun and Michael Scott Cuthbert, “Emotion Painting: Lyric, Affect, and Musical Relationships in a Large Lead-Sheet Corpus,” Empirical Musicology Review 12.3–4 (2018), pp. 327–48.

Video 12b shows how Bach’s chorales (four-voice religious pieces with mostly homophonic motion and chord changes in nearly every beat) can be used as a corpus within music21. Note, in the video, I used the old form “`.flat`” instead of the new form “`.flatten()`”

Video 12b: Chorales as a Corpus

Once you have a score, you will want some ways of summarizing musical trends within it (as we saw in Cook’s Computational and Comparative Musicology article). While you can do that with programming, a much more effective method is by using visualizations. Video 12c describes how to get started with this:

Video 12c: Graphing and Plotting in music21

Readings:

Once you’ve viewed the video, read music21 User’s Guide, Chapter 22 in more detail. If you want to work with advanced topics, also read Chapter 44.

For more information on the effective use of visual information, skim or read Edward Tufte’s book: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780961392147.

Ties in music21 are a tiny thing, but it’s really helpful to know how to work with them. Video 12d explains what you need to know to get started with them:

Video 12d: How to Work with Ties in music21

For more on ties, clefs, and beams, see music21 User’s Guide, Chapter 31

## Course Info

##### Instructor

- Prof. Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert

##### Departments

- Music and Theater Arts

##### As Taught In

Spring 2023

##### Level

Undergraduate
Graduate

##### Topics

- Fine Arts
  - Music
    - Music History
    - Music Theory
- Mathematics
  - Computation
  - Mathematical Analysis
  - Probability and Statistics

##### Learning Resource Types

notes Lecture Notes
theaters Lecture Videos
theaters Other Video
assignment Multiple Assignment Types
grading Exams
Editable Files

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