Jazz improvisations analyzed with software

With the help of free software offered by musicologists from Weimar and Jena, personal styles of jazz musicians and characteristics of improvisational creative processes can be analyzed. Almost 300 examples are now stored in a "Weimar Jazz Database".

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How do swing solos differ from bebop solos and Charlie Parker's improvisations from those of John Coltrane? Is it the lines, the rhythmic structure - or perhaps the choice of notes and scales? How does it even work: improvising? The Jazzomat Research Project at the joint Institute of Musicology Weimar-Jena of the Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, headed by Martin Pfleiderer and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), has been addressing these questions since October 2012.

Initially, the Weimar Jazz Database was set up, which now contains 299 jazz solos - exemplary improvisations from eight decades of jazz history that have been transcribed by students of the jazz and musicology courses. At the same time, project team members Jakob Abesser and Klaus Frieler have developed the freely available analysis software MeloSpyGUI 1.0, which can also be used to analyze other musical genres.

It can be used to generate information about the notes, intervals and rhythms used in the solos and much more at the touch of a button or to search for specific patterns in certain jazz solos. This in turn enables detailed descriptions of the personal styles of jazz musicians and allows overarching conclusions to be drawn about improvisational creative processes.

The MeloSpyGUI 1.0 analysis software and the Weimar Jazz Database can be downloaded free of charge from the project website. Extensive documentation and tutorials on the software and its possible uses can also be found there. In addition, information and initial analysis results are presented for each jazz solo in the Weimar Jazz Database; the transcriptions can also be listened to and downloaded as midi versions.

Website: jazzomat.hfm-weimar.de
 

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