Having a music search engine like YMusic is an advantage. What can analysts and curious minds do with it? It depends on their target. With a corpus of nearly 40,000 pieces of music, numerous observations, hypothesis and conclusions can be drawn, possibly leading to research methods’ development. A lot of living composers, including in popular genres, are highly interesting and we will talk about them at a later date. Regarding classical music, the advantage of famous composers is that their music can be heard easily online, so, when someone presents some new data about it, everyone can check easily and quickly if these data are correct.
For this reason, we will begin this series of posts around musical contents analyzed via YMusic with simple observations related to a series of several classical pieces: fugues and preludes written by Johann Sebastian Bach. First, in the YMusic search engine interface, we can open the “Basic score information research” window. Wee will see that, after we will have entered “Bach” and “Fugue” in the window dedicated to metadata (“Metadata research”), which can be found below, we will be able to get interesting pieces of information, like score duration, tempo value, number of measures, number of beats, key signature and time signature. Let us select all these criteria. It is easy, we just need to open the corresponding scrolling bars (just as it is shown in the image). Then, let us click on “Search”.
The YMusic search engine brings us back 142 results, mainly fugues and preludes, and several other pieces (including a toccata). There are more fugues and preludes than this in the database associated to YMusic, yet we chose to focus on Bach. When we activate the “Graphics” button, we see a triple entry table. When we associate “Score duration” to “Size”, “Number of measures” to “X” and “Tempo value” to “Y”, numerous points of reference appear. Each of them represents a track, a fugue or a prelude written by Bach, sometimes a fugue and a prelude. Some of these points form a small ensemble, an ensemble made of titles which present more similarities between them than isolated points.
Let us select one of these ensembles directly in the triple entry table. It can be done in one instant: with the right-click button of the mouse, we just need to outline a small rectangle. We now see these points in a new tint: clear green. Furthermore, in the linear table above, which lists the 142 fugues and preludes, we now see that some lines have a darker hue: each of these darker lines give more information related to the selected points, including their title.
We selected seven titles. What do they have in common? At first sight, their tempo is similar and they contain an almost equal number of measures. Can we know more? Yes, we can insert these selected lines in a playlist. Let us notice that, to create and record our playlist, we must create an account. YMusic suggests to do it when we click the “Playlists” button. The value of this strictly personal account (reachable through the button “My account”) is that it makes it possible to record our playlists and, consequently, to optimize our research through time.
Once in our account, below the content of the playlist, we see that we have two players to listen to each title of the playlist: one is related to our YouTube account (we can reach each piece of music when we are disconnected too), the other one is linked to our Spotify account (we must be connected to listen to complete pieces of music).
Let us notice that we can hide several criteria chosen before to focus on a smaller number of parameters. We just need to right-click the mouse and uncheck the useless elements.
Let us select a player. We can listen to all the titles, one by one, and discern by ear the similarities found by the YMusic search engine, by practising attentive listening. What emerges from this simple search is, of course, that the tempo of these seven pieces is very similar, whatever their main instrument is, guitar or organ. This can be heard by ear. The ear can validate the accuracy of the search results and the researcher is not forced to analyze the content of the sheet music for each of the seven pieces of music – even if, of course, the two methods can enrich each other.
Here is what our playlist looks like, when it is exported to YouTube.
Do we want to know more about this group of titles, select another ensemble in the results or make another research? We can of course work on a larger body of music, for instance by introducing “Bach” as unique keyword. Or choose another composer we think about.
Of course, during every search, we will keep in mind that, even for criteria as simple as the tempo, the way in which the performers translate the indications of a sheet music into sound is not totally objective. Therefore, regarding the tempo, in a particular piece of music, a certain number of musical performances are slightly faster than the tempo identified by YMusic, or, conversely, a little slower.
Let us finally notice that the YMusic search engine database was created to help us in our music research activities. It includes: 5000+ composers, 3000+ performers, 39 000+ titles (from the 10th century to the 2010s), 850+ sub-genres and 25 genres.
In another post, though, we will continue with Bach's fugues and preludes and will select another ensemble, to examine the parameters of the “Advanced music criteria research” provided by YMusic.
Musically,
The YMusic search engine team
Written by Françoise Delsaux, Marketing designer and product designer
fd@music-search-engine.info
Arpege Music Software Development
hello @ music-search-engine.info
http://www.arpegemusic.com
Arpege's mission is to develop sheet music composition and notation software, in an environment now completed by the YMusic search engine, an intelligent technology which provides musicians with quantified insights, via music visualizations and similarities graphs.
What can you do with this information?
Each music (re)searcher has his/her own targets, in various contexts and we providing guidelines for research or publishing is not our mission.
Our role is rather to help researchers to renew the manner in which they can see and assemble musical elements to get a deeper understanding of music, exploiting all new information into their specific framework and transforming it into knowledge.
We wish you great hours and interesting finds with YMusic.