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Fundamentals of Music Processing pp 167–236Cite as

Music Structure Analysis

Abstract

One of the attributes distinguishing music from random sound sources is the hierarchical structure in which music is organized. At the lowest level, one has events such as individual notes, which are characterized by the way they sound, their timbre, pitch, and duration. Combining various sound events, one obtains larger structures such as motifs, phrases, and sections, and these structures again form larger constructs that determine the overall layout of the composition. This higher structural level is also referred to as the musical structure of the piece, which is specified in terms of musical parts and their mutual relations. For example, in popular music such parts can be the intro, the chorus, and the verse sections of the song. Or in classical music, they can be the exposition, the development, and the recapitulation of a movement.

Keywords

  • Dynamic Time Warping
  • Novelty Detection
  • Path Structure
  • Popular Music
  • Music Information Retrieval

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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  1. International Audio Laboratories Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany

    Meinard Müller

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Müller, M. (2015). Music Structure Analysis. In: Fundamentals of Music Processing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21945-5_4

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