daemon@bartok.EBay.Sun.COM (10/21/89)
Music-Research Digest Fri, 20 Oct 89 Volume 4 : Issue 62
Today's Topics:
Computer research in Schenkerian analysis (3 msgs)
Determining musical key
Encore and other scoring programs for the Mac, issue 57
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Date: 19 Oct 89 19:51:15 GMT
From: Creative Business Decisions <Q2816@edu.princeton.pucc>
Subject: Computer research in Schenkerian analysis
To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg
I have forwarded our net.correspondence re: Schenker and computers
to my friend Michael J. Schiano, a doctoral student in music theory
at Brandeis. He's done some work with computers to aid analysis,
and knows his Schenker as well. He responds:
I think computer generation (background to foreground) using
the Schenkerian rules is a neat thing: I think it can tell
a lot STATISTICALLY as to what's possible or probable or
problematic or whatever.
I don't think Schenkerianism is a reductive thing at all.
Schenker goes back to fore; we are actually reconstructing
a back-to-fore derivation by doing that derivation backwards
(which we call reduction.)
So, if the steps from back to fore are: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10, say,
then when we do Schenker (and when Schenker did Schenker), it's:
OK, we have 10. How can we get there? Ah, 9!
So, now we have 9-10.
Now how can we get THERE?
Oh look! 7!
Yea. 7-8-9-10.
I don't think Schenker reduction is 10-9-8-7...
and I think a computer algorhythm that does that is of course
going to be troublesome since it would really have to do
10
then guess what's before that:
8 50 98 56 2000 1 9..............ah 9!
9-10
etc.
Later, Michael
MSCHIANO@BRANDEIS.BITNET
Roger Lustig (Q2816@PUCC.BITNET Q2816@pucc.princeton.edu)
Disclaimer: "That is not my dog."
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Date: 19 Oct 89 10:25:12 GMT
From: Geraint Wiggins <eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aipna!geraint@edu.mit.bloom-beacon>
Subject: Computer research in Schenkerian analysis
To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg
In article <5013@orca.WV.TEK.COM> steveb@eve.WV.TEK.COM () writes:
>I am also looking for information on potential file formats and encoding
>schemes for the input side. Any information would be extremely helpful.
>
>Steve
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>FROM: STEVEN C. BILOW -- Software Engineer, Tektronix
>EMAIL: steveb@orca.WV.TEK.COM PHONE: (503) 685-2463
I and two colleagues in Edinburgh, Alan Smaill and Mitch Harris, have a
prototype datastructure based on abstract datatypes which you might be
interested in. The advantage is that once you've written your software, anyone
can use it on their representation, provided they've followed our (fairly
simple) rules.
If you're interested, mail me and I'll send you the paper.
Geraint
--
Geraint A Wiggins | G.A.Wiggins@uk.ac.ed
Department of Artificial Intelligence | G.A.Wiggins%ed.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
University of Edinburgh | Opinions are like noses: everyone has
80 South Bridge, Edinburgh, Scotland | his/her own, and most smell...
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Date: 19 Oct 89 00:25:16 GMT
From: Stephen Smoliar <uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ginosko!usc!venera.isi.edu!smoliar@gov.nasa.arc.ames>
Subject: Computer research in Schenkerian analysis
To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg
In article <1325@accuvax.nwu.edu> sandell@ferret (Greg Sandell) writes:
>In article <5013@orca.WV.TEK.COM> steveb@eve.WV.TEK.COM () writes:
>>I have long been contemplating writing software that can analyze tonal music
>>via Schenker techniques. Every time I attempt to scope out the problem I
>>seem
>>to increase in complexity by an order of magnitude. I am looking for folks
>>who
>>have attempted to tackle this problem.
>
>Stephen Smoliar, no stranger to the net (esp. rec.music.classical) has an
>article titled "A computer aid for Schenkerian analysis," COMPUTER MUSIC
>JOURNAL 4/2, 41-59. Another item is by James
>Snell (1979), "Design for a formal system for deriving tonal music,"
>but you will find it practically impossible to find since it is a
>Master's thesis (State University of New York at Binghamton).
>
First of all, I would like to thank Greg for cross-posting this to
rec.music.classical, thus allowing me to get in on this discussion.
Secondly, I should point out that the "computer aid" discussed in the
aforementioned article is basically a structure editor (as was observed
by Jim Meehan in HIS article in that same issue of COMPUTER MUSIC JOURNAL).
Thus, it does not offer very much as far as automating the process of analysis.
Rather, it provides a consistent structural foundation for what those graphs
are REALLY trying to say (i.e. a hierarchy of elaborations). Thus, it is an
aid for someone who has already conceived of the analysis and wishes to make
sure it is expressed consistently.
My first step away from this direction is recorded in the Report of the Twelfth
Congress of the International Musicological Society, in which I had to respond
to a paper by Michael Kassler. At that point I was beginning to realize that
there was more to music than any sort of "parse tree" representation such as
could be offered by Schenker graphs. I felt that music analysis had to follow
the lead of natural language processing and start looking for ways to represent
semantics (whatever that might mean) as well as syntax (i.e. well-formedness).
This was the beginning of my migration towards issues of memory, such as those
I am now trying to develop.
It should be relatively apparent that I am not really a member of the Schenker
camp. Thus, I reject this whole idea of "correctness" which Greg cited. I
believe that the Schenker notation is a good step towards documenting a
particular performance of a composition (to the extent that it distinguishes
structural from auxiliary notes). However, I feel strongly that there may be
two quite different interpretations which are equally "correct." Thus, if you
want a computer to do its own analysis, it is worth asking why you wish to
undertake the task. One reason might be for the machine to advice you on
how to play it. However, it is unlikely that a machine will ever give you
a "definitive" analysis of a composition, since it is unclear that such an
analysis exists.
=========================================================================
USPS: Stephen Smoliar
USC Information Sciences Institute
4676 Admiralty Way Suite 1001
Marina del Rey, California 90292-6695
Internet: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu
"For every human problem, there is a neat, plain solution--and it is always
wrong."--H. L. Mencken
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 89 21:49:41 EDT
From: Michael Hawley <mike@edu.mit.media.tome>
Subject: Determining musical key
To: music-research@com.sun.eng.bartok
re: determining musical key, the brute-force approach is
to simply count the pitches (possibly weighted by duration)
and fold into a one-octave histogram. A typical piece in C
major shows in decreasing order, the tonic, the dominant,
the sub-dominant, and then usually a disambiguating major
or minor third (ie.., C-G-D-E(b)). The slope of the histogram
indicates "tonal-ness" (e.g., bitonal pieces by Debussy,
or even rags by Joplin, produce bimodal distributions with
ambiguous interpretation; flattened histograms usually indicate
atonality).
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Date: 18 OCT 89 17:19 CET
From: U7F01AA@EARN.DM0LRZ01
Subject: Encore and other scoring programs for the Mac, issue 57
To: MUSIC-RESEARCH@UK.AC.OXFORD.PRG
If you don't like the user interfaces on the Mac you will probably not like
the user interface of SCORE for the PC. But probably SCORE will do all the
tricks that you want, so perhaps you find that you could tolerate the
interface. In this case, S11input might be of help to you. It is
designed to be a partial front-end, mouse/window style, and also accepts
single step MIDI input. No standard-MIDI file, no shiny sequencer.
It runs on an Atari-ST, is public domain (i.e. share-ware), and is
available from the CDP/York or from us.
Hans Strasburger, Munich, Germany.
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End of Music-Research Digest