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Efficient Communication in Written and Performed Music
1Centre d'Analyse et de Mathématique Sociales, CNRS, EHESS, PSL University.
Cognitive Science
|March 28, 2020
Summary
Information theory reveals that unexpected musical notes are longer and louder. This principle of efficient communication applies to music, similar to language, impacting harmonic sequences.
Area of Science:
- Music Information Science
- Computational Musicology
- Information Theory
Background:
- Shannon's information theory has been successfully applied to language, demonstrating efficient communication principles from phonetics to syntax.
- Efficient communication suggests allocating more resources to highly informative elements, influencing aspects like word length prediction over frequency.
- The application of efficient communication principles to music analysis remains underexplored despite its success in linguistics.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the relevance of efficient communication principles in the organization of harmonic information within Western music.
- To analyze the relationship between the information content of harmonic sequences and musical properties like duration and loudness.
- To explore whether unexpected harmonic events are treated differently in terms of their musical presentation.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of two large corpora of Western music (MIDI scores and live piano performances).
- Application of information-theoretic measures to quantify the contextual information content of harmonic sequences.
- Correlation analysis to determine the relationship between harmonic information content and musical features (duration, loudness).
Main Results:
- A significant positive correlation was found between the contextual information content of harmonic sequences and their duration.
- A significant positive correlation was observed between the contextual information content of harmonic sequences and their loudness.
- More unexpected harmonic events, characterized by higher information content, were consistently longer and louder.
Conclusions:
- The study demonstrates that principles of efficient communication are applicable to the analysis of harmonic organization in Western music.
- Unexpected harmonic events are allocated more musical resources (duration and loudness), aligning with efficient coding principles.
- This research bridges information theory and musicology, offering new insights into the structure and perception of music.
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