An Experiment in the Computer Measurement of Melodic Variation in Folksong

Abstract

MANY FOLK MUSIC SCHOLARS have been frustrated by the problem of determining folk tune variants. Although virtually thousands of pages have been written concerning the technique of thematic variation as practiced by the greatest artistic composers of Western music, contributions of a significant nature regarding the changes undergone by folk melodies have been distinctly few in number. Even those studies that have been done have often resulted indirectly from techniques of indexing melodies or discussions of stylistic analysis. Although scholars certainly do manage to determine tune variants through some mysterious mental process, few have attempted to determine a musical variant in even a partly objective way. In this report we present a process by which thematic variation can be determined with the aid of objective analysis done by a computer. The folk are not automatic transmitters of a received tune. What they carry in their memories are general outlines, a fluid notion of song recreated according to each individual's mental concept of a particular melody. Tunes are adapted to the occasion, to the mental constitution of the singer at that particular moment, and to the response of the listener. The singer is free to change melodic movement and rhythm, range and mode within a series of traditional controls not consciously present in the musician's mind. Thus, any attempt to determine variants must be elastic enough to account for the fluid concept of music the folk possess, while at the same time maintaining some relative constant upon which to base a system of determination. Some relatively objective systems for determining melodic variants have been proposed, although none has been significantly successful, mainly because each has been confined to only one parameter of comparison and each has been much

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