Style-Independent Computer-Assisted Exploratory Analysis of Large Music Collections

Abstract. The first goal of this ,paper is to introduce musicologists and music theorists to the benefits offered by state-of-the-art pattern recognition techniques. The second goal is to provide them ,with a computer-based, frame- work,that can be used ,to study ,large and di- verse collections of music,for the purposes of empirically developing, exploring and vali- dating theoretical models. The software pre- sented in this ,paper implements ,techniques from the fields of machine learning, pattern recognition and ,data mining ,applied to and considered,from ,the perspectives of music theory and musicology. An important ,priority underpinning,the software ,presented here is the ability to apply it to a much wider range of art, folk and popular musics of the world than ispossible using the types of computer-based approaches,traditionally used ,in music ,re-