An energy-based generative sequence model for testing sensory theories of Western harmony

Peter Harrison, Marcus Pearce

Research output: Contribution to book/anthology/report/proceedingArticle in proceedingsResearchpeer-review

15 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The relationship between sensory consonance and Western harmony is an important topic in music theory and psychology. We introduce new methods for analysing this relationship, and apply them to large corpora representing three prominent genres of Western music: classical, popular, and jazz music. These methods centre on a generative sequence model with an exponential-family energy-based form that predicts chord sequences from continuous features. We use this model to investigate one aspect of instantaneous consonance (harmonicity) and two aspects of sequential consonance (spectral distance and voice-leading distance). Applied to our three musical genres, the results generally support the relationship between sensory consonance and harmony, but lead us to question the high importance attributed to spectral distance in the psychological literature. We anticipate that our methods will provide a useful platform for future work linking music psychology to music theory.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 19th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, ISMIR 2018
Number of pages8
Place of publicationParis: IRCAM
Publication date2018
Pages160-167
ISBN (Electronic)9782954035123
Publication statusPublished - 2018

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'An energy-based generative sequence model for testing sensory theories of Western harmony'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this