Music Analysis Through Visualization

In this paper analytic visualizations are used to selectively highlight salient musical features in four modern compositions, focusing on micro or macro structures: from motivic pitch contour to large-scale form. At a glance these visualizations allow a quick grasp of the structure and assist listeners to make connections between local features and global trends. Textures obscured by musical notation become more apparent when displayed in a graphical format, such as broad registral shifts, polyphonic streaming, as well as interplay between instruments. Pitch, timbre and voicing are plotted against time to show large-scale patterns that would otherwise be difficult to recognize in a musical score or compare between different works. Music analysis through compositional data visualization not only makes sense to musicians but also to non-musicians, facilitating collaboration and exchange with artists and technicians in other media