Harmonic Contexts Research Articles

Chord sense: Enhancing stylistic Chord Progression generation with fine-tuned transformers

Chord Progressions (CP) constitute a fundamental element within musical compositions. Skillful application of harmonies can captivate audiences through the colors and emotions they elicit. While existing research has predominantly focused on generating stylistically coherent CPs and accompaniments, relatively few studies have delved into the optimization of generating specific CPs of interest across diverse harmonic contexts. On this basis, this study aims to address this gap by fine-tuning a foundational CP model using datasets generated through three distinct strategies. Subsequently, the performances of the strategies are compared using both existing and novel evaluation metrics. According to the analysis, the results reveal that the model fine-tuned using the third strategy demonstrates proficiency in producing the target CPs across diverse contexts and modes of generation in a musically coherent manner. This approach opens up avenues for creative learning and sharing of stylistic chord progressions through exchanging customized fine-tuned chord models.

Cantacumine.ro - An E-Learning Tool that Supports Composition Approach. An Illustrative Application Within a Collaboration Between Two Music-Specialized Schools / cantacumine.ro - Resursă tehnologică suport în abordarea aspectelor creative. Exemple de bune practici din cadrul unui parteneriat dintre două licee vocaționale cu profil muzică din țară

This article showcases a successful cooperation that addresses a novel addition introduced in the 2017 Music Theory school curricula, with a particular emphasis on creative elements. The exemplified scenario is a product of a partnership between two Music-Specialised High Schools. The students, who played a pivotal and valued role in this activity, were guided by coordinating teachers and supported by the section dedicated to creative aspects of the platform https://www.cantacumine.ro/. They had the opportunity to develop their creative talent in rhythmical-melodic and harmonic contexts, creating new musical structures in one, two or three parts. The students used notation programs to create their compositions, demonstrating their eagerness to acquire digital music notation skills through dedicated practice, largely carried out after school hours.

Modeling harmony biases in learning exceptions to vowel harmony

Artificial language learning experiments typically show non-categorical results after training on categorical data. This is generally due to incomplete learning, but these results can also reveal biases. One example is that participants trained on a vowel harmony language with alternating and non-alternating affixes prefer the non-alternating affix in harmonic contexts (Finley 2021). In this paper, I show that (i) the preference for harmonic items in non-alternating affixes replicates for remote (online) data collection, and (ii) that this effect can be modeled with MaxEnt Harmonic Grammar. In Harmonic Grammar, the harmony score of each candidate determines its grammaticality, and the probability of surfacing. Because non-alternating affixes that satisfy vowel harmony have higher harmony scores than non-alternating affixes that violate harmony, harmonic candidates will be more likely to surface than disharmonic candidates, even when both types of items surface at levels greater than expected by chance. The theoretical and methodological implications for these results are discussed

Conservation of Melody With Varied Harmonizations: A Comparison of Adult Listeners From China and the United States

This study replicates and extends previous research investigating young adults’ ability to conserve melody under different harmonic contexts by comparing Chinese listeners ( N = 131) with U.S. listeners (Liu, 2018; N = 61). Using identical stimuli and procedures from the original study, participants listened to 34 pairs of melodic examples and identified whether the melody presented was the “same or different.” Results indicated Chinese listeners had a well-developed ability to identify the sameness of a melody when it was presented (a) alone, then with harmony (Task I); (b) with harmony, then with different harmony (Task II); and (c) with harmony, then alone (Task III, a reversed task of Task I). Overall, Chinese participants performed significantly better than U.S. participants. Corroborating prior research, music reversibility was also observed among Chinese listeners, as demonstrated by successful responses in two reversed music tasks (Task I and Task III). The performance differences on Task II between listeners with low versus no level of mastering reversibility regardless of country of origin and between Chinese listeners only with a high and a low level of reversibility further support the concept of music reversibility and its role in musical thinking.

Into the Secrets of Jazz Arranging: Chromatic Scale in Different Harmonic Contexts

Herein we introduce a reliable and effective method, allowing any musician, regardless of the theoretical background, to carry out a 4-way jazz harmonization of whatever melodic progression almost instantly, with few exceptions. Many jazz students experience a deep frustration in dealing with the harmonization of non-diatonic notes. Sometimes, moreover, a coherent harmonization of the aforementioned notes can turn out to be a very challenging task even for extremely skilled professionals. In this paper, the harmonization of the chromatic scale in different harmonic contexts is accurately discussed, by resorting to the well-known concepts of harmonic functions, tonicization, chromatic and diatonic parallelism, and auxiliary chords. All the chords are labelled so as to allow the reader to immediately understand their role in the particular harmonic context. Consequently, the procedure essentially translates into an optimization of the "harmonic flow".

Learning Exceptions in Phonological Alternations.

The present study explores learning phonological alternations that contain exceptions. Participants were exposed to a back/round vowel harmony pattern in which a regular suffix obeyed a vowel harmony rule, varying between /e/ and /o/ depending on the back/round phonetic features of the stem, and a non-alternating suffix that was always /o/ regardless of the features of the stem vowel. Participants in Experiment 1 learned the behavior of both suffixes, but correct performance for the non-alternating suffix was higher when the suffix happened to be in harmony with the stem. Participants in Experiment 2 were exposed to the non-alternating affix in harmonic contexts only, and continued to show a bias towards harmony. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2 with minimal training on disharmonic cases of the non-alternating morpheme. However, participants were less likely to learn the alternating affix without exposure to morphological stem, stem + suffix alternations in Experiment 4, suggesting a bias towards morphophonological alternations in learning vowel harmony patterns.

Effects of global and local contexts on chord processing: An ERP study

In real life, the processing of an incoming event is continuously influenced by prior information at multiple timescales. The present study investigated how harmonic contexts at both local and global levels influence the processing of an incoming chord in an event-related potentials experiment. Chord sequences containing two phrases were presented to musically trained listeners, with the last critical chord either harmonically related or less related to its preceding context at local and/or global levels. ERPs data showed an ERAN-like effect for local context in early time window and a N5-like component for later interaction between the local context and global context. These results suggest that both the local and global contexts influence the processing of an incoming music event, and the local effect happens earlier than the global. Moreover, the interaction between the local context and global context in N5 may suggest that music syntactic integration at local level takes place prior to the integration at global level.

Harmonic Structure Predicts the Enjoyment of Uplifting Trance Music.

An empirical investigation of how local harmonic structures (e.g., chord progressions) contribute to the experience and enjoyment of uplifting trance (UT) music is presented. The connection between rhythmic and percussive elements and resulting trance-like states has been highlighted by musicologists, but no research, to our knowledge, has explored whether repeated harmonic elements influence affective responses in listeners of trance music. Two alternative hypotheses are discussed, the first highlighting the direct relationship between repetition/complexity and enjoyment, and the second based on the theoretical inverted-U relationship described by the Wundt curve. We investigate the connection between harmonic structure and subjective enjoyment through interdisciplinary behavioral and computational methods: First we discuss an experiment in which listeners provided enjoyment ratings for computer-generated UT anthems with varying levels of harmonic repetition and complexity. The anthems were generated using a statistical model trained on a corpus of 100 uplifting trance anthems created for this purpose, and harmonic structure was constrained by imposing particular repetition structures (semiotic patterns defining the order of chords in the sequence) on a professional UT music production template. Second, the relationship between harmonic structure and enjoyment is further explored using two computational approaches, one based on average Information Content, and another that measures average tonal tension between chords. The results of the listening experiment indicate that harmonic repetition does in fact contribute to the enjoyment of uplifting trance music. More compelling evidence was found for the second hypothesis discussed above, however some maximally repetitive structures were also preferred. Both computational models provide evidence for a Wundt-type relationship between complexity and enjoyment. By systematically manipulating the structure of chord progressions, we have discovered specific harmonic contexts in which repetitive or complex structure contribute to the enjoyment of uplifting trance music.

A phonetic inquiry into Dagbani vowel neutralisations

AbstractPrevious researchers differ on what the feature specifications of Dagbani vowels are, what the vowel inventory is, which vowels are contrastive and how phonological processes affect the surface realisation of Dagbani vowels. This study provides experimental results on Dagbani vowel features from acoustic and perceptual psycholinguistic inquiries with the goal of better defining the vowel features and inventory. Basic formant frequencies of the vowels in different phonological contexts support the view that (1) vowels of all height specifications (including /a/) have [ATR] variants; (2) /i/ and /ɨ/ neutralise in harmonic contexts; and (3) mid vowels surface as low in non-final positions. Results of a perceptual psycholinguistic investigation of the neutralisation between mid and low vowels also show that in certain contexts, speakers are unable to perceive any distinction between different words with these vowels. The paper discusses the implications of these results on the Dagbani vowel inventory, evaluating the merits of different possible approaches in the process.

Galant Recitative Schemas

Italianate recitative of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries constituted a distinct musical language that coexisted with the familiar style of common practice music. In this article we propose a theory of that language (“galant recitative”), which we characterize in terms of a core vocabulary of fifteen melodic formulas. Appendix 1 presents a roster of these formulas, which captures a unique fingerprint of recitative, distinct from the comparable inventory of homophonic phrase schemas in Robert Gjerdingen’s Music in the Galant Style. These recitative schemas are defined in terms of characteristic melodic profiles, harmonic contexts, formal roles, and expressive associations. One representative schema, the “O cielo,” is used to demonstrate the musical features and range of variation characteristic of all recitative schemas. The formal associations of the schemas allow us to describe the basic phrase syntax of recitative, grouping the schemas into three broad formal roles: initiatory, medial, and closing. Appendix 2 demonstrates this formal model by analyzing the dramatic climax of Leonardo Vinci and Pietro Metastasio’s opera Artaserse (1730). Additionally, some schemas have focused semantic connotations and are used to mark such utterance types as questions and witticisms. The article concludes with an analysis of scenes from act 1 of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, which shows how sensitivity to manipulations of galant recitative schemas can reveal subtle effects of characterization and dramatic continuity.

Monotonicity and the typology of front/back harmony

AbstractIn this paper, we analyse the surface patterns of suffix harmony in front/back harmony systems as the harmonic values front and back being assigned to harmonic contexts consisting of strings of syllables combining front, back and neutral nuclei. We claim that the harmonic contexts can be arranged in a fixed (universal) scale, the frontness/backness scale, with reference to which the possible (i.e. attested) front/back harmony systems can be characterised in a simple way: only those systems are possible where the assignment of values to the harmonic contexts is monotonic, which makes sure that only contiguous (non-interrupted) sequences of harmonic values are assigned to the harmonic contexts. We give formal definitions of monotonicity in terms of ordering and similarity and discuss predictions about possible harmony systems that follow from monotonicity (which we claim are borne out). These predictions are typological: harmony systems can show disharmonic behaviour, but in a principled way: only those systems exist (at least in front/back harmony) that exhibit a monotonic pattern. In the second half of the paper, we discuss variation in harmony and analyse in detail variation in anti-harmony and transparency in Hungarian, which is thus an example of a variable harmony pattern. We argue that variable front/back harmony patterns assign a “variable” value to some harmonic contexts in addition to the front and back values and can be shown to be constrained by monotonicity, whose definition is naturally extendable to patterns with variation. We discuss both the ordering-based and the similarity-based definitions and the predictions about possible variable harmony systems that follow from the definitions. One of the main predictions of the paper is a consequence of monotonicity: the locus of the variation in a pattern occurs only “in between” non-variable subpatterns. We explore a possible way of quantification in which we identify the harmonic values with the relative token frequency of the forms where the number associated with a variable value is

Constructing alto saxophone multiphonic space

Multiphonics are sonorities with two or more independent tones arising from instruments, or portions of instruments, associated with the production of single pitches. Since the 1960s multiphonics have been probed in two ways. Acousticians have explored the role of nonlinearity in multiphonic sound production (Benade 1976; Backus 1978; Keefe & Laden 1991) and musicians have created instrumental catalogs of multiphonic sounds (Bartolozzi 1967; Rehfeldt 1977; Kientzy 1982; Levine 2002). These lines of inquiry have at times been combined (Veale & Mankopf 1994). However, a meta-level analysis has not yet emerged from this work that answers basic questions such as how many kinds of multiphonics are found on one particular instrument and which physical conditions underlie such variety. The present paper suggests a database driven approach to the problem, producing a “quantitative resonant frequency curve” that shows every audible appearance of each frequency in a large—if not permutationally exhaustive—set of alto saxophone multiphonics. Compelling data emerges, including sonority prototypes, prototype transposition levels, and register specific distortions. Notably, true difference tones—audible difference tones unsustainable apart from a sounding multiphonic—are found to be register specific, not sonority specific; suggesting that physical locations (rather than harmonic contexts) underpin these sounds.

A obra de Elomar Figueira Mello: contexto e estilo além do popular e do erudito

Discussão sobre os processos composicionais na obra de Elomar Figueira Mello, considerada neste artigo em duas vertentes: a regionalista e popular (presente no seu cancioneiro) e a erudita (representada principalmente por suas óperas), que integram estilos diversos como a cantoria nordestina, o estilo flamenco, a seresta, o tango, o hinário cristão e a música erudita tradicional. Essa integração produz contextos harmônicos com mesclas de modalismo e tonalismo, assim como um fraseado complexo derivado principalmente do uso do dialeto regional no sul da Bahia. O estilo de Elomar revela alguns dos "elos perdidos" na formação da música brasileira através de sua admirável hibridação de estilos e técnicas diversas.

Frank Martin e la dodecafonia

The most part of literature has underestimated Frank Martin’s relationship with the dodecaphony, perhaps deliberately. In reality, dodecaphony concerns a significant part of the production of the Swiss composer and cannot be reduced to a sporadic occurrence of twelve-tone series within thematic functions. The essays aims to analyze Martin’ s personal use of some instances of Arnold Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic method, particularly in the 4 Short Pieces for guitar (1933), in the first Concerto for piano (1933/1934), in the Trio pour violon, alto et violoncello (1936) and in Der Schrei , the eighth song of the cycle Der Cornet (1942/1943). While in these pieces, one might observe Martin's tendency to exploit the series especially as chromatic enrichment of the melodic line (usually without recourse to inversion or retrograde) predominantly in tonal harmonic contexts, there are, however, moments in which the series takes the control over the vertical dimension, thus becoming the real Grundgestalt of the composition. Nevertheless, also in this case Martin avoids to drive his music toward a complete atonality, building its series with a clear predominance of consonant intervals and triadic groups. In general, Martin’s relation to dodecaphony shows personal features, that should however be assimilated to the broader context of the reception of Schoenberg’s method in the Thirties and Forties.

The Influence of Harmoniccontext on the Tuning of Thirds Played by Professional Flautists

The aim of this study is to investigate how professional orchestral musicians perform major and minor thirds in different harmonic contexts. The intervals were recorded simultaneously, in the most natural acoustic conditions possible, by four professional flautists. The fundamental frequencies of thepitches were determined from the digital recording by Fourier transformation with a spectrum analysis programme. The intention of this was measurement precision of < 1 cent. The measured width of the intervals are compared with their pure, Pythagorean and equal tempered equivalents. The results show that, with major thirds and independent of the harmonic context, the pure tuning is preferred. With minor thirds, pure tuning prevails over equal temperamenttuning when the interval occurs within a harmonic context, such as a major triad or a dominant seventh chord. The Pythagorean tuning fares worse in terms of intonation in the performance of both intervals.

Global context effects on musical expectancy.

The effects of global harmonic contexts on expectancy formation were studied in a set of three experiments. Eight-chord sequences were presented to subjects. Expectations for the last chord were varied by manipulating the harmonic context created by the first six: in one context, the last chord was part of an authentic cadence (V-I), whereas in the other, it was a fourth harmonic degree following a full cadence (I-IV). Given this change in harmonic function, the last chord was assumed to be more expected in the former context, all the other local parameters being held constant. The effect of global context on expectancy formation was supported by the fact that subjects reported a lower degree of completion for sequences ending on an unexpected chord (Experiment 1), took longer to decide whether the last chord belonged to the sequence when the last chord was unexpected (Experiment 2), and took longer to decide whether the last chord was consonant or dissonant when it was unexpected (Experiment 3). These results are discussed with reference to current models of tonal cognition.

Contextual Condition and Sightsinging Achievement of Middle School Choral Students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of harmonic context on the sightsinging skill of middle school choral music students. A nonrandomized control-group pretest-posttest design with one between-group (treatment method) and two within-group (trial and test context) factors was used. The treatment method used three harmonic contexts: (a) melody only, (b) piano harmony, and (c) vocal harmony. The trial condition had two levels (pretest and posttest), and the test context condition had four levels: (a) melody-only, (b) piano-harmony, (c) vocal harmony/upper with the melody in the higher of two voices, and (d) vocal harmony/lower with the melody in the lower of two voices. A repeated measures ANOVA revealed significant differences for the test context and trial main effects and for the trial by treatment group interaction; subjects obtained the highest sightsinging scores when tested in a melody-only context. Because of the significant interaction between trial and treatment group, one-way ANOVAs were used to test for simple main effects in both trial conditions (pretest and posttest). Although no significant differences were detected in the pretest ANOVA, the posttest ANOVA revealed significant differences among treatment groups. Post hoc analysis indicated that subjects in the melody-only treatment group showed more improvement in sightsinging skill than did subjects in the vocal-harmony treatment group. No difference was revealed, however, between the melody-only treatment group and the piano-harmony treatment group.