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A functional approach to automatic melody harmonisation

Published: 28 September 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Melody harmonisation is a centuries-old problem of long tradition, and a core aspect of composition in Western tonal music. In this work we describe FHarm, an automated system for melody harmonisation based on a functional model of harmony. Our system first generates multiple harmonically well-formed chord sequences for a given melody. From the generated sequences, the best one is chosen, by picking the one with the smallest deviation from the harmony model. Unlike all existing systems, FHarm guarantees that the generated chord sequences follow the basic rules of tonal harmony. We carry out two experiments to evaluate the quality of our harmonisations. In one experiment, a panel of harmony experts is asked to give its professional opinion and rate the generated chord sequences for selected melodies. In another experiment, we generate a chord sequence for a selected melody, and compare the result to the original harmonisation given by a harmony scholar. Our experiments confirm that FHarm generates realistic chords for each melody note. However, we also conclude that harmonising a melody with individually well-formed chord sequences from a harmony model does not guarantee a well-sounding coherence between the chords and the melody. We reflect on the experience gained with our experiment, and propose future improvements to refine the quality of the harmonisation.

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Cited By

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  • (2023)An HMM-Based Approach for Cross-Harmonization of Jazz StandardsApplied Sciences10.3390/app1303133813:3(1338)Online publication date: 19-Jan-2023
  • (2023)Neural Networks And Ensemble Based Architectures To Automatic Musical Harmonization: A Performance ComparisonApplied Artificial Intelligence10.1080/08839514.2023.218584937:1Online publication date: 11-Mar-2023
  • (2022)Melodic Skeleton: A Musical Feature for Automatic Melody Harmonization2022 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo Workshops (ICMEW)10.1109/ICMEW56448.2022.9859421(1-6)Online publication date: 18-Jul-2022
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cover image ACM Conferences
FARM '13: Proceedings of the first ACM SIGPLAN workshop on Functional art, music, modeling & design
September 2013
84 pages
ISBN:9781450323864
DOI:10.1145/2505341
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Publication History

Published: 28 September 2013

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Author Tags

  1. automatic harmonisation
  2. fharm
  3. harmony
  4. harmtrace
  5. haskell
  6. haskore

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FARM '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 7 of 8 submissions, 88%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 19 of 23 submissions, 83%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2023)An HMM-Based Approach for Cross-Harmonization of Jazz StandardsApplied Sciences10.3390/app1303133813:3(1338)Online publication date: 19-Jan-2023
  • (2023)Neural Networks And Ensemble Based Architectures To Automatic Musical Harmonization: A Performance ComparisonApplied Artificial Intelligence10.1080/08839514.2023.218584937:1Online publication date: 11-Mar-2023
  • (2022)Melodic Skeleton: A Musical Feature for Automatic Melody Harmonization2022 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo Workshops (ICMEW)10.1109/ICMEW56448.2022.9859421(1-6)Online publication date: 18-Jul-2022
  • (2022)Translating Melody to Chord: Structured and Flexible Harmonization of Melody With TransformerIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.315546710(28261-28273)Online publication date: 2022
  • (2022)Berklee MethodMusic, Mathematics and Language10.1007/978-981-19-5166-4_4(79-94)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2022
  • (2021)A Survey on Automatic Musical Chord Sequence GenerationAdvances in Power Systems and Energy Management10.1007/978-981-15-7504-4_2(9-20)Online publication date: 21-Jan-2021
  • (2021)Cognitive Musicology and Artificial Intelligence: Harmonic Analysis, Learning, and GenerationHandbook of Artificial Intelligence for Music10.1007/978-3-030-72116-9_10(263-281)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2021
  • (2020)Automation of Musical Compositions Synthesis Process Based on Neural NetworksProceedings of the Fourth International Scientific Conference “Intelligent Information Technologies for Industry” (IITI’19)10.1007/978-3-030-50097-9_6(51-59)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2020
  • (2019)Demo: counterpoint by constructionProceedings of the 7th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Functional Art, Music, Modeling, and Design10.1145/3331543.3342578(22-24)Online publication date: 23-Aug-2019
  • (2018)Musical blending and creativity: An empirical evaluation of the CHAMELEON melodic harmonisation assistantMusicae Scientiae10.1177/102986491771258022:1(119-144)Online publication date: 21-Feb-2018
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