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Options in [] I'm working on.

 

This will be a help file one day!

Advice:

  • The request must be relative to the key of C, so that the start of "Knick-Knack" would be expressed "c b c d e e", any tune in a minor key as A minor notes, so that the start of "xxx" would be expressed as "....".
  • Lower case letters please.
  • This is a prototype of a simple browser for our music database; comments and suggestions welcome.

Use

In the first (Category) field, select the type of tune required, reels, jigs, hornpipes, waltzes, slip jigs, etc. See the database page for more details.

In the next (Mode) field, select one of the following.

  • notes : This causes a search for tunes containing a given note sequence, which may occur anywhere in the tune. The sequence can overlap bar lines.
  • notesbarstart : To search for a given note sequence in the tunes, but it must occur starting at the beginning of a bar.
  • notesstart : To search for a given note sequence in the tune, but it must occur starting at the beginning of the tune (ignoring lead-in notes).
  • chords : To search for tunes containing a given chord sequence anywhere in the tune;
  • chordsbarstart : To search for a given chord sequence in the tune, but it must occur starting at the beginning of a bar.
  • chordsstart : To search for a given chord sequence in the tune, but it must occur starting at the beginning of a bar.
  • title : To search for tunes with the title or acknowledgment containing a given keyword.
  • nearest* : To search for tunes stylistically similar to a given tune. The command uses our stylistic similarity engine suggest about 8 other tunes of similar style.
    • nearestl : This searches using clustering based on a note-length distribution algorithm, fairly crude at present.
    • nearestp : Another similarity algorithm, based on the pitches of the notes in the piece (relative to the key).
    • nearesti : Yet another similarity algorithm, this time based on the interval pattern between consecutive notes of the piece.
    • nearest : A combination of the above three methods, and therefore rather slow. The two integers at the end of each line indicate the number of hits among the three algorithms (3 = good, 2 = average) followed by the average distance metric (the lower the value, the better the match).
    • nearesth : A similar harmonic structure to the first pohrase.

In the third (Request) field, the note browsing options (notes, notesbarstart, notesstart) require you to specify a note sequence by typing e.g.
c b c d e e
to pick out the start of Knick-Knack.

  Type the required sequence of notes in lower case; for major keys, give them as they would appear in the key of C, for minor keys, as they would appear in A minor.

The note "b-flat" w.r.t. the key of C is to be typed as "b-", "e-flat" as "e-", "a-flat" as "a-", "d-flat" as "d-", "f-sharp" as "f+", "c-sharp" as "c+", "g-sharp" as "g+" and "d-sharp" as "d+".

For options requiring a chord sequence (chords etc) the chord names are in capital letters, e.g.

    C Am Dm G7 C
with "m" for minor and "7" for dominant seventh chords (that's all the choice at the moment). Type "D." for any type of "D" chord. Do not repeat any chords, we treat consecutive identical chords as a single chord.

The last options (title, nearest, etc) require that you name a specific music file (starts lower case, given on the other pages) or type a keyword from a title (starting upper case) or acknowledgement.

The "title" options prints out all files containing this keyword.

The "nearest" options take the first file with this keyword, and list about 8 stylistically similar tunes. The list starts with the name of the tune being used as the basis of the comparisons. The others are listed in order, closest first.

There are many obvious extensions when time permits. Suggestions welcome.

Category

Mode.....

Request..

 
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