Lessons and modules

These modules with several tutorials introduce various possibilities of computer-assisted analysis of sheet music and audio files on the basis of music-analytical questions. The tutorials can be carried out in self-study or within courses. The duration of the lessons is approximately 4-6 hours or three sessions of a 90-minute with additional preparation, homework, and optional immersion. You can find a list of tutorials here. But first to the question:

Why do we analyze music?

There are certainly many different objectives for analyzing music. However, the following two motives are fundamental:

Analysis as a discovery and descriptive approach to music always means making musical events explicit, and is thus a means for understanding music and a prerequisite for communicating music.

There are a number of applications and objectives of musical analysis. Here are perhaps the most important:

Today, the various procedures and approaches to musical analysis can be extended by computer-aided methods of visualization, statistical evaluation and targeted pattern search. This is what the tutorials are about.

The methodical extension cannot and does not want to replace the listening of music and the examination of the sheet music in any case - but rather wants to extend and empirically substantiate it.

The tutorial on audio analysis focuses on recordings - and thus on listening to music. Recordings can also be visualized with the help of the computer, especially by displaying the spectral energy distribution in relation to time (Basics Audio). For recordings of popular music, of ethnic music, but also of electroacoustic music, new analytical approaches have been developed in which musical notation sometimes plays no role (Advanced Audio).

The project is currently in the testing phase. Feedback is welcome: analyse@hfm-weimar.de