Contextual Chord Embeddings for Stylistic Analysis

Video

Format (When): Where

  • Presentation (2021): South Central Society for Music Theory

TL;DR

Chords don’t always act the same, they change based on context: for example, a C major triad typically acts one way in C major key and another in F major. What about between styles and composers? Drawing on techniques from machineLearning and naturalLanguageProcessing, I derive numerical representations for chords based on their use in different styles.

Studying representations from classical styles correlate with claims frequently made in music theory. In a rock style… not so much.

Here’s the accompanying code in python.