On the Complex Network Structure of Musical Pieces: Analysis of Some Use Cases from Different Music Genres

TL;DR

This paper models musical melodies as networks, revealing they are generally scale-free and small-world, which can aid in music analysis and multimedia applications.

Contribution

It introduces a network-based approach to analyze melodies across genres, highlighting their scale-free and small-world properties.

Findings

Networks are generally scale-free.

Networks exhibit small-world properties.

Features can be extracted for multimedia applications.

Abstract

This paper focuses on the modeling of musical melodies as networks. Notes of a melody can be treated as nodes of a network. Connections are created whenever notes are played in sequence. We analyze some main tracks coming from different music genres, with melodies played using different musical instruments. We find out that the considered networks are, in general, scale free networks and exhibit the small world property. We measure the main metrics and assess whether these networks can be considered as formed by sub-communities. Outcomes confirm that peculiar features of the tracks can be extracted from this analysis methodology. This approach can have an impact in several multimedia applications such as music didactics, multimedia entertainment, and digital music generation.