Statistical analysis of the features of diatonic music with jMusic

Abstract

Much has been written about the rules of melody writing and this paper reports research that uses computer-based statistical analysis to test the efficacy of these rules. As a method to assist in the computer generation of melodies, we have devised computer software that analyses melodic features. This paper will outline the melodic features identified in melody-writing literature and the results of their fit with our statistical analysis of melodies from the western music repertoire. We will also present details of the computer-based analysis software and the jMusic software environment in which it was built. The software and jMusic environment are open source software projects that are freely available, and so opportunities to develop these tools to suit other music analysis tasks will be discussed.