How can music visualisation techniques reveal different perspectives on musical structure?

Hunt, Samuel; Mitchell, Tom; Nash, Chris

Abstract

Standard western notation supports the understanding and performance of music, but has limited provisions for revealing overall musical characteristics and structure. This paper presents several visualisers for highlighting and providing insights into musical structures, including rhythm, pitch, and interval transitions, also noting how these elements modulate over time. The visualisations are presented in the context of Shneiderman’s Visual Information-Seeking Mantra, and terminology from the Cognitive Dimensions of Music Notations usability framework. Such techniques are designed to make understanding musical structure quicker, easier, less error prone, and take better advantage of the intrinsic pattern recognition abilities of humans.

Citation

Hunt, S., Mitchell, T., & Nash, C. (2017, May). How can music visualisation techniques reveal different perspectives on musical structure?. Paper presented at Third International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation, A Coruña, Spain

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Third International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation
• Start Date: May 24, 2017
• End Date: May 26, 2017
• Acceptance Date: May 1, 2017
• Publication Date: May 1, 2017
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: music analysis, music visualisation
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/888098
• Publisher URL: http://www.udc.es/grupos/ln/tenor2017/sections/node/17-visualisation.pdf
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : Third International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation