Computational Approaches



  • one problem with experimental studies: Western listeners only
    How do we study music from other cultures?

  • databases of music from over 60 cultures: from Acoma Indians to Zulu warrior songs:

    Brazilian songs, Bugandan xylophone music, Japanese pop songs, Persian, Norwegian, Ojibway, Hassidic songs, Gregorian chant, Western classical music music

  • Tools vs Machines
    nature of research activities requires software tools approach

  • "Humdrum"
    • 60 software tools, including analytic tools, tools for sound generation and high-quality music notation
    • written in C, C++, awk, yacc, lex, kornshell & perl
    • POSIX-conformant
    • source code distributed
    • fully documented
    • large user base
    • tens of thousands of encoded musical works