LookingOutward 07

Link: https://www.bewitched.com/song.html

\I’ve investigated the data visualization software, Shape of Music, created by Martinez Wattenberg. The software detects rhythm similarities in a piece of lyrics and diagrams similar parts by creating a connection with half discs.

What I really admire about this program is the brand-new way of representing musical rhythms, where instead of noting musical notes through sheet music, the program diagrams patterns. This helps visualize patterns in music, where instead of looking through sheet music to find a similar rhythm in a song, one can look at the connections through the lines, and see what parts of the song are most frequently repeated.

The software is entirely written in java and uses MIDI files to analyze the rhythm, where, unlike other common file types, a MIDI file contains a description of the notes which makes the analysis of the letters much more amendable. The MIDI files can also be separated into different tracks and analyzed separately. The algorithm I suppose is programmed to look for similar patterns in a range of note descriptions and create a connection through an arc diagram as a connection to map the similarities.

It is obvious that the author is keen on simplicities in diagraming, and he has also said on his website that he has taken inspiration from other arc diagrams, which is a simple yet effective form of diagraming to communicate information.