Melody / Voice Alignment Visualization

2018

This projects focuses on an analysis of contours and the exploration of relationships between multiple voices or instruments. It was based on the idea of a music browsing interface, where one could get an idea of the melodic variability within each piece along with its respective vertical relationships (e.g. parallel vs. contrapuntal movements), as the sketch in fig. 1 shows.

Fig. 1 Personal sketch | License: CC BY-SA 4.0 (click to enlarge)

In order to dig further into the concept of melodic development, I took existing examples from different music eras and I attempted their visual representation by drawing contours and alignments on paper, as the examples below indicate - the original scores are displayed on the left and the sketches on the right represent vertical relationships, consonances and melodic sequences. This way I started developing a better understanding of horizontal and vertical relationships, legato vs. staccato representations and parallel soundings across time.

Nymphes des bois (excerpt) / Josquin des Prez (ca. 1445/60-1521)

String quartet op. 59/3: IV. Allegro molto (excerpt) / L. v. Beethoven (1770-1827)

Processing sketch

Based on the explorations above I was able to design my final Processing sketch, which visualized music contours extracted from MIDI sequences. The sketch analyzed the tracks and midi events, and extracted pitch heights, note durations and musical rests, providing a visual counterpart to melodic movements for each instrument. I used various examples as input, and I brought the extracted visualizations together, so that comparisons would be made possible. The following image is a collection of the generated contours of works by different composers. Further elaboration on the code can potentially reveal more insights regarding alignment and voice relationships in different compositional styles.