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By mining user-generated text content we can obtain music-related information that could not otherwise be extracted from audio signals or symbolic score representations. In this paper we propose a methodology for extracting musically-relevant semantic information from an online discussion forum, rasikas.org, dedicated to the Carnatic music tradition. For that we define a dictionary of relevant terms such as raagas, taalas, performers, composers, and instruments, and create a complex network representation by matching such dictionary against the forum posts. This network representation is used to identify popular terms within the forum, as well as relevant co-occurrences and semantic relationships. This way, for instance, we are able to guess the instrument of a performer with 95% accuracy, to discover the confusion between two raagas with different naming conventions, or to infer semantic relationships regarding lineage or musical influence. This contribution is a first step towards the creation of ontologies for a culture-specific art music tradition.

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355_ISMIR_2012.pdf

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Popular music is a key cultural expression that has captured listeners' attention for ages. Many of the structural regularities underlying musical discourse are yet to be discovered and, accordingly, their historical evolution remains formally unknown. Here we unveil a number of patterns and metrics characterizing the generic usage of primary musical facets such as pitch, timbre, and loudness in contemporary western popular music. Many of these patterns and metrics have been consistently stable for a period of more than fifty years. However, we prove important changes or trends related to the restriction of pitch transitions, the homogenization of the timbral palette, and the growing loudness levels. This suggests that our perception of the new would be rooted on these changing characteristics. Hence, an old tune could perfectly sound novel and fashionable, provided that it consisted of common harmonic progressions, changed the instrumentation, and increased the average loudness.

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srep00521.pdf

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Popular music is a key cultural expression that has captured listeners' attention for ages. Many of the structural regularities underlying musical discourse are yet to be discovered and, accordingly, their historical evolution remain formally unknown. In this contribution we use tools and concepts from statistical physics and complex networks to study and quantify the evolution of western contemporary popular music. In it, we unveil a number of patterns and metrics characterizing the generic usage of primary musical facets such as pitch, timbre, and loudness. Moreover, we find many of these patterns and metrics to be consistently stable for a period of more than fifty years, thus pointing towards a great degree of conventionalism in this type of music. Nonetheless, we prove important changes or trends. These are related to the restriction of pitch transitions, the homogenization of the timbral palette, and the growing loudness levels. The obtained results suggest that our perception of new popular music would be largely rooted on these changing characteristics. Hence, an old tune could perfectly sound novel and fashionable, provided that it consisted of common harmonic progressions, changed the instrumentation, and increased the average loudness.

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Popular music is a key cultural expression that has captured listeners' attention for ages. Many of the structural regularities underlying musical discourse are yet to be discovered and, accordingly, their historical evolution remain formally unknown. In this contribution we use tools and concepts from statistical physics and complex networks to study and quantify the evolution of western contemporary popular music. In it, we unveil a number of patterns and metrics characterizing the generic usage of primary musical facets such as pitch, timbre, and loudness. Moreover, we find many of these patterns and metrics to be consistently stable for a period of more than fifty years, thus pointing towards a great degree of conventionalism in this type of music. Nonetheless, we prove important changes or trends. These are related to the restriction of pitch transitions, the homogenization of the timbral palette, and the growing loudness levels. The obtained results suggest that our perception of new popular music would be largely rooted on these changing characteristics. Hence, an old tune could perfectly sound novel and fashionable, provided that it consisted of common harmonic progressions, changed the instrumentation, and increased the average loudness.

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This book focuses on the automatic identification of musical piece versions (alternate renditions of the same musical composition like cover songs, live recordings, remixes, etc.). In particular, two core approaches for version identification are proposed: model-free and model-based. Furthermore, the book introduces the use of post-processing strategies to improve the identification of versions in a query-by-example paradigm. Overall, several tools and concepts are employed, including nonlinear signal analysis, complex networks, and time series models. This work brings automatic version identification to an unprecedented stage where high accuracies are achieved and, at the same time, explores promising directions for future research. Although the main steps are guided by the nature of the considered signals (music recordings) and the characteristics of the task at hand (version identification), the methodology of this book can be easily transferred to other contexts and domains.

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