Tonalities

Goals and Objectives

As part of the European project Polifonia (H2020 grant agreement N. 101004746) Tonalities embraces the open linked data paradigm to reference large corpora of music made available in digital score libraries and to explore them analytically through a quantitative-qualitative approach. This approach consists of modelling different theories – historical or contemporary, specific or general – and applying them to musical works through a dedicated interface combining machine learning and human annotation

The collaborative annotation interface for music analysis that constitutes the core of Tonalities addresses the following challenges:

• Selecting different models, corresponding to different theoretical and analytical viewpoints.
• Selecting every item on the score (single notes, groups of notes, verticalities, etc.) at any level of granularity.
• Creating arbitrary selection trees through nested selections, editing a selection or adding/removing elements (including other selections).
• Associating concepts derived from the models with these analytical elements.
• Commenting on the analytical annotations.
• Comparing the annotations made on the same score either by different users or on the basis of different models.

To this end, Tonalities builds on the laboratory’s data model, developed and implemented in the SHERLOCK project – a web platform for collaborative knowledge-creation processes – and provides a dynamic web application for creating, editing and deleting RDF data via a dedicated API.

• We offer an easy-to-use and centralized programmatic interface for creating CIDOC-CRM-based RDF data relating du music theory and analysis.
• We ensure that the data is standardized and fits to the SHERLOCK model developed at the IReMus. 
• We manage the access rights through the ORCID third party authentication service: all analytical annotations are signed (ORCID ID), resources can only be edited by their authors, all contributions can be retrieved through ORCID IDs
• We encourage other web applications from other laboratories to use the service provided.

On this basis, it becomes possible to grasp how distinct theoretical viewpoints bring to light different – sometimes conflicting – musical properties; confront different analytical interpretations; look “inside” both theories and works; understand how both evolve in time in relation to each other; and, ultimately, provide reasoned, documented, and authored analyses. In addition to external score libraries (Josquin Research Project, CRIM, Measuring Polyphony, Gesualdo Online, The Lost Voices Project), Tonalities is relying on the NEUMA score library developed at the IReMus in collaboration with the CNAM.
 

Project members

Thomas BOTTINI (IReMus),
Philippe CATHÉ (IReMus),
Achille DAVY-RIGAUX (IReMus),
Christophe GUILLOTEL-NOTHMANN (IReMus), project leader
Marco GURRIERI (IReMus),
Antoine LEBRUN (IReMus), 
Félix Poullet-Pagès (IReMus)

PhD students

Adam FILABER (IReMus)

Links

• Tonalities’ Interface
• Tonalities’ Presentation on the Polifonia Website

Demos

• Christophe Guillotel-Nothmann, Tonalities presentation and demo
• Marco Gurrieri explains the ambition of the pilot
• Félix Poullet-Pagés presents Tonalities' Interface New Functionalities ⟨hal-04093568⟩
• Félix Poullet-Pagès presents Tonalities' Interface Demo ⟨hal-04093712⟩
• Christophe Guillotel-Nothmann, Nested annotations in Tonalities
• Christophe Guillotel-Nothmann, Annotations imbriquées dans Tonalities <hal-04581162>
• Marco Gurrieri, Annotation of large selections in Tonalities

Presentations and Publications

• Thomas Bottini, Christophe Guillotel-Nothmann, Nicolas Meeùs. Vecteurs harmoniques : le point sur la question. Journée d’Analyse Musicale 2022 : L’analyse de l’harmonie aujourd’hui, Dec 2022, Paris, France. ⟨hal-03923747⟩
• Thomas Bottini, Christophe Guillotel-Nothmann, Marco Gurrieri, Félix Poullet-Pagès. Tonalities: a Collaborative Annotation Interface for Music Analysis. Musical Heritage Knowledge Graphs workshop during the 22nd International Semantic Web Conference 2022, Oct 2022, Hangzhou, China. ⟨hal-03923731⟩
• Adam Filaber, Christophe Guillotel-Nothmann, Marco Gurrieri. Tonalities: Musical systems and their histories revisited through modeling and collaborative score annotation: A case study on “directed progressions” in secular works by Josquin and his contemporaries. Global Digital Music Studies Conference, CUNY Graduate Center; The Brook Center; RILM, Apr 2023, New York, United States. ⟨hal-04071815⟩
• Christophe Guillotel-Nothmann, Marco Gurrieri. TONALITIES - Goals and validation. Polifonia 2nd consortium meeting – Bologna - 13-14-15 October 2021, Oct 2021, Bologna, Italy. ⟨halshs-03509547⟩
• Christophe Guillotel-Nothmann, Marco Gurrieri. TONALITIES’ Collaborative Annotation Interface. 5th Polifonia Project Meeting, CNAM, Sep 2022, Paris, France. ⟨hal-04094120⟩

Dissemination

• Arianna Graciotti, ​Marco Grasso, Marco Gurrieri​, Eleonora Marzi, Valentina Presutti, Rocco Tripodi, Presentation of the Polifonia Project. European Researchers Night, Sep 2022, Bologna, Piazzale Lucio Dalla/Tettoia Nervi, Italy. ⟨hal-04081988⟩
• Arianna Graciotti, Marco Grasso, Marco Gurrieri, Nicolas Lazzari, Eleonora Marzi, Elena Musumeci, Valentina Presutti, Giulia Renda, Polifonia: la colonna sonora della nostra cultura, Notte Europea dei Ricercatori, Sep 2023, Bologna, Piazzale Lucio Dalla/Tettoia Nervi, Italy. ⟨hal-04265826⟩

Deliverables​ related to Tonalities

• Christophe Guillotel-Nothmann, Thomas Bottini, Valentina Anita Carriero, Jason Carvalho, Philippe Cathé, et al. D1.1 Roadmap and pilot requirements 1st version. [Research Report] CNRS. 2021. ⟨hal-03512812⟩
• Christophe Guillotel-Nothmann, Jacopo de Berardinis, Thomas Bottini, Philippe Cathé, Enrico Daga, et al. D1.2 Roadmap and pilot requirements 2nd version. Institut de recherche en musicologie (IReMus). 2022. ⟨halshs-04079523⟩
• Christophe Guillotel-Nothmann, Marco Gurrieri, Chukwudi Festus, Adam Filaber, Peter Kranenburg, Van, et al. D1.6 Intermediate validation reports for pilots TONALITIES, TUNES, MUSICBO and CHILD 1st version. IReMus. 2023. ⟨halshs-04079571⟩
• Jason Carvalho, Enrico Daga, Marco Gurrieri, Andrea Scharnhorst. D2.6: Ontology of licencing, ownership and conditions of use (V1.0). Open University. 2023. ⟨halshs-04265780⟩
• Nicholas Canny, Jason Carvalho, Alba Catalina Morales Tirado, Enrico Daga, Jacopo de Berardinis, et al.. D1.8: Final ten-pilots validation report and lessons learned (V1.0). Open University; King's College London; IReMus; CNAM; NUIG; KNAW; MiC; Università di Bologna. 2024. ⟨hal-04582760⟩

GitHub

• Polifonia>>>Tonalities
  • Link to the Persona Sethus and his Stories (for a narrative approach to Tonalities' research objectives and needs)
  • ​Mockup of Tonalities' interface 
  • Validation elements for Tonalities project
• S.H.E.R.L.O.C.K.>>>Tonalities

User(s) Survey(s)

The opinion of the scientific community matters to us. If you want to evaluate the software and influence its development, please fill out this questionnaire (5 minutes):

• Tonalities_Questionnaire on the objectives

Improvements implemented in the v2 of Tonalities' interface 

A first evaluation campaign addressed to our stakeholders made emerge some general problems, critics/suggestions on ergonomics, and corrections on the terminology adopted in the first version of the interface:

• the process of selection requires too many passages and manipulations;
• the process of annotation is time-consuming;
• a list of shortcuts for all the typologies of selection should be added;
• a system of pop-ups could be adopted to manage the classes and properties of the theoretical models;
• to implement an automatic system for generating some basic analysis (e.g. to track all the dissonances);
• ergonomics and intuitiveness/clarity need to be improved;
• the hotspot of the elements in the score must be enlarged in order to improve the selection options;
• some terminology needs to be corrected. 

Improvements have, therefore, been made in the perspective of reducing clutter. Another suggestion was about the intervention/collaboration of an expert in Web ergonomics. A general strategy to adopt have been to study the functionalities and the options already available in other similar music web-services, in order to meet the end user’s habits and familiar gestures. An extra effort have also been made in order to reduce the time-consuming of the music analytical process on the screen. This will potentially be lesser than the same process conducted in the traditional way. Another important aspect we took into account was to give the possibility to the end user to suggest a personal and adapted analytical scenario, going beyond the possibilities currently offered by the Interface.

Social Networks (Polifonia Project)

LinkedIn
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