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Computer-assisted cantillation and chant research using content-aware web visualization tools

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Abstract

Chant and cantillation research is particularly interesting as it explores the transition from oral to written transmission of music. The goal of this work to create web-based computational tools that can assist the study of how diverse recitation traditions, having their origin in primarily non-notated melodies, later became codified. One of the authors is a musicologist and music theorist who has guided the system design and development by providing manual annotations and participating in the design process. We describe novel content-based visualization and analysis algorithms that can be used for problem-seeking exploration of audio recordings of chant and recitations.

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Notes

  1. Archived Examples from Hungarian Academy of Science (1968–1973).

  2. Archived Examples from Hungary and Morocco from the Feher Music Center at the Bet Hatfatsut, Tel Aviv, Israel.

  3. Godehard Joppich and Singphoniker: Gregorian Chant from St. Gallen (Gorgmarienhtte: CPO 999267-2, 1994).

  4. Examples from Indonesia and Egypt: in Approaching the Koran (Ashland: White Cloud, 1999).

  5. One cent is 1/100 of a semitone, corresponding to a frequency difference of about 0.06%.

  6. Thinking statistically, our scale is related to a distribution given the relative probability of each possible pitch. We can think of each F0 estimate (i.e each sampled value of the F0 envelope) as a sample drawn from this unknown distribution so our problem becomes one of estimation the unknown distribution given the samples.

  7. http://marsyas.sourceforge.net

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Matt Wright for initial work on this project and Emiru Tsunoo for the Marsyas implementation of dynamic time warping and similarity matrix computation used in the paper. We would also like to thank the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada for their financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

    Steven R. Ness & George Tzanetakis

  2. School of Music, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

    Dániel Péter Biró

Authors
  1. Steven R. Ness
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  2. Dániel Péter Biró
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  3. George Tzanetakis
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Correspondence to Steven R. Ness.

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Ness, S.R., Biró, D.P. & Tzanetakis, G. Computer-assisted cantillation and chant research using content-aware web visualization tools. Multimed Tools Appl 48, 207–224 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-009-0357-x

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