14 - 19 OCTOBER, 2012. SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, USA

The Beatles Genome Project: Cluster Analysis and Visualization of Popular Music

Contributors: 
Douglas Mason
Description
We present a database system for storing and retrieving abstracted musical information as well as visualizations for interpreting this information. We then apply hierarchical cluster analysis to show statistical phenomena occuring in a corpus of popular songs written by the Beatles. We find that chords and melodic rhythms fall into distinct clusters which distinguish each song, indicating possible principles of composition.