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midiVERTO: A Web Application to Visualize Tonality in Real Time

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Mathematics and Computation in Music (MCM 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13267))

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Abstract

This paper presents a web application for visualizing the tonality of a piece of music—the organization of its chords and scales—at a high level of abstraction and with coordinated playback. The application applies the discrete Fourier transform to the pitch-class domain of a user-specified segmentation of a MIDI file and visualizes the Fourier coefficients’ trajectories. Since the coefficients indicate different musical properties, such as triadicity and diatonicity, the application isolates aspects of a piece’s tonality and shows their development in time. The aim of the application is to bridge a gap between mathematical music theory, musicology, and the general public by making the discrete Fourier transform as applied to the pitch-class domain accessible without requiring advanced mathematical knowledge or programming skills up front.

This research project has received funding from the UNIL-EPFL dhCenter, an interdisciplinary research platform set up between Université de Lausanne (UNIL) and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. The project was also supported in part by the University of Amsterdam Data Science Centre.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The app is accessible at https://dcmlab.github.io/midiVERTO.

  2. 2.

    Source code available at https://github.com/DCMLab/midiVERTO.

  3. 3.

    MIDI file taken from https://bitmidi.com/uploads/6508.mid.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Martin Rohrmeier for his support and guidance as well as Jason Yust and Cédric Viaccoz for their valuable comments in the development process of the web application.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Daniel Harasim & Fabian C. Moss

  2. Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Giovanni Affatato

  3. University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Fabian C. Moss

Authors
  1. Daniel Harasim
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  2. Giovanni Affatato
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  3. Fabian C. Moss
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel Harasim .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Mariana Montiel

  2. Technological University of the Mixteca, Huajuapan de León, Mexico

    Octavio A. Agustín-Aquino

  3. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Francisco Gómez

  4. Life University, Marietta, GA, USA

    Jeremy Kastine

  5. National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico

    Emilio Lluis-Puebla

  6. Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Brent Milam

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Harasim, D., Affatato, G., Moss, F.C. (2022). midiVERTO: A Web Application to Visualize Tonality in Real Time. In: Montiel, M., Agustín-Aquino, O.A., Gómez, F., Kastine, J., Lluis-Puebla, E., Milam, B. (eds) Mathematics and Computation in Music. MCM 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13267. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07015-0_31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07015-0_31

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-07014-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-07015-0

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