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We present a dataset of 264 annotated piano pieces of nine composers, composed in the long 19th century (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7483349). Annotations adhere to the DCML harmony annotation standard and include Roman numerals, phrase boundaries, and cadence types. The scores are encoded in the XML-based MuseScore 3 format. Annotations are embedded within the MuseScore files. In addition, all harmony information, alongside key features of the encoded measure and note objects, is provided in the form of plaintext TSV-formatted tables for increased interoperability with other datasets and analysis tools. Annotations were collaboratively created and reviewed by a pool of trained music theorists. Collaboration took place asynchronously online via a semi-automated GitHub-based workflow designed for quality assurance, allowing cycles of revisions and reviews until consensus is reached. The full revision history is retained, providing data for further empirical research on inter-annotator agreement and related topics. We also present descriptive statistics about the nine corpora and the dataset as a whole, including comparisons of pitch-class contents, phrase lengths, modulations, and cadence types. We conclude with a discussion of our musicological principles for corpus building and considerations of representability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new symbolic corpus of musical themes from the complete Star Wars trilogies (Episodes I-IX) by John Williams. The corpus files are made available in multiple formats (.krn, .sib., and .musicxml) and include melodic, harmonic, and formal information. The Star Wars Thematic Corpus (SWTC) contains a total of 64 distinctive, recurring, and symbolically meaningful themes and motifs, commonly referred to as leitmotifs. Through this corpus we also introduce a new humdrum standard for non-functional harmony encodings, harte (Harte et al., 2005; Harte, 2010). This report details the motivation, describes the transcription and encoding processes, and provides some brief summary statistics. While relatively small in scale, the SWTC represents a unified collection from one of the most prolific and influential composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, and the under-studied subset of film and multimedia musical material in general. We hope the SWTC will provide insights into John Williams' compositional style, as well as prove useful in comparisons against other thematic corpora from film and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay focuses on the characteristics of corpora drawn from pedagogical materials and contrasts them with the properties of corpora of larger repertoires. Two case studies show pedagogical corpora to contain relatively more chromaticism, and to devote more of their probability mass to low-frequency events. This is likely due to the formatting of and motivation behind classroom materials (for example, focusing proportionately more resources on difficult concepts). I argue that my observations challenge the utility of using pedagogical corpora within research into implicit learning. I also suggest that these datasets are uniquely situated to yield insights into explicit learning, and into how musical traditions are represented in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is encouraging to see renewed attention to 'openness' in academia, that debate (and its interpretation of the F.A.I.R. principles) is often rather narrowly defined. This paper addresses openness in a broad sense, asking not so much whether a project is open, but how open and to whom. I illustrate these ideas through examples of my own ongoing projects which to seek to make the most of a potential symbiosis between academic and wider musical communities. Specifically, I discuss how these communities can both benefit from - and even work together on building - highly accessible and interoperable corpora of scores and analyses when ambitious openness is factored into decision making from the outset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mauch, MacCallum, Levy, and Leroi (2015) carried out a large-scale study of changes in American popular music between 1960 and 2010. Using signal processing methods, they found evidence suggesting a decreasing use of the dominant seventh chord and increasing use of the minor-minor seventh chord. While signal analysis methods have improved substantially in recent years, the accuracy of signalbased analysis remains imperfect. Using a contrasting method and independent musical sample, this paper reports converging evidence replicating these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to the research presented in Léveillé Gauvin’s paper on the evolution of harmonic syntax in popular music from the 1960s. I begin by situating the findings from his second study (on flat-side harmonies) within the context of my corpus work with David Temperley on harmony in popular music. Léveillé Gauvin’s results are similar to ours, although some important differences are worth noting. I also provide an interpretation of the results from his first study (on modulation), which Léveillé Gauvin found to be inconsistent with his proposed hypothesis. Specifically, I conjecture that modulation and harmonic palette may be in balance with one another, in that listeners may prefer songs where harmonic content is at a medium level of complexity. Léveillé Gauvin’s study also brings forth some basic issues with regard to harmonic encoding, in terms of both the subjectivity of the analytical process as well as the ease by which harmonic analyses are shared with and verified by other researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this research is to investigate the pitch structures of popular music in the 1960s through a large corpus study in order to identify any consistent changes in harmonic and tonal syntax. More specifically, two studies based on the Billboard DataSet (Burgoyne, Wild & Fujinaga, 2011; Burgoyne, 2011), a new corpus presenting transcriptions for more than 700 songs, are presented. The first study looks at the incidence of multi-tonic songs throughout the decade, while the second study focuses on the incidence of flat-side harmonies (e.g. bIII, bVI, and bVII) over the same period of time. While no difference was observed in the frequency of multi-tonic songs, the study showed a significant increase in the incidence of flat-side harmonies during the second half of the decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]