• Visualizing Harmony Using Chordal Glyphs and Color Mapping

    Author(s):
    Justin Lind
    Editor(s):
    Stefan Münnich (see profile) , David Rizo
    Date:
    2022
    Group(s):
    Music Encoding Initiative
    Subject(s):
    Digital humanities, Music, Musical notation
    Item Type:
    Conference proceeding
    Conf. Title:
    Music Encoding Conference 2021
    Conf. Org.:
    University of Alicante
    Conf. Loc.:
    On-Site & Online
    Conf. Date:
    19–22 July 2021
    Tag(s):
    color, glyph design, harmony, visualization, Music notation
    Permanent URL:
    https://doi.org/10.17613/taak-jv92
    Abstract:
    Musical scores are frequently annotated with harmonic information, but widely used text-based methods rely on a limited number of visual channels. Though glyph-based methods exploit more channels, existing systems often violate perceptual design principles when employing color and rarely capture the frequency of chordal changes or their harmonic function. In this work, we introduce a new design idiom for augmenting sheet music through chordal glyphs embedded directly within musical staves. Harmonic concepts, weighted by saliency and categorized by data type, are mapped to visual channels ranked by discriminability. Preattentive processing is leveraged to support various user tasks, alongside redundant encodings of foundational harmonic elements to improve overall perceptual effectiveness. Key names and chord roots are displayed using parallel hue-based 12-step categorical colormaps. We then distill several design implications inherent in assigning colors to musical pitches regarding perceptual and linguistic effectiveness. Following this discussion, we outline open research directions.
    Notes:
    The MEC 2021 was hosted at Universidad de Alicante. It was sponsored by the Conselleria de Innovación, Universidades, Ciencia y Sociedad Digital de la Generalitat Valenciana (ref. AORG/2021/095), the Instituto de Investigación Informática de la Universidad de Alicante (IUII), co-sponsored with the Instituto Superior de Enseñanzas Artísticas de la Comunidad Valenciana (ISEA.CV), and generously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of the Government of Canada (SSHRC).
    Metadata:
    xml
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    10 months ago
    License:
    Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives

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