Computational Music Representation based on
the Generative Theory of Tonal Music and
the Deductive Object-Oriented Database,
Keiji Hirata and Tatsuya Aoyagi
Abstract:
This article presents a new framework for representing and
manipulating polyphony based on the generative theory of tonal music
(GTTM) and the deductive object-oriented database (DOOD). Since music
theory can serve as a basis for analyzing and understanding the vague
and subjective meanings of music, it is expected to contribute to the
enhancement of a music knowledge representation. First, we design a
formal representation method of music knowledge so that time-span
reduction in GTTM corresponds to the subsumption relation in the DOOD.
Then we introduce three primitive operators to manipulate polyphony
represented in our method. By several examples, we show how well our
framework can represent listener's intuition and provide operators for
manipulating polyphony. This paper primarily describes music
representation, not applications of our framework, and we would say
that before computers can automatically derive a time-span analysis
from a musical score, major work, i.e., formal representation of
music, needs to be done.