Music21
music21 is an open-source Python toolkit for computational musicology. It can help analyze, search, and transform musical scores with features like chord identification, key detection, and more. Useful for musicians, musicologists, and researchers.
musicology
analysis
notation
composition
python
music21: Open-Source Python Toolkit for Computational Musicology
An open-source Python toolkit for analyzing, searching, and transforming musical scores with features like chord identification, key detection, and more, useful for musicians, musicologists, and researchers.
What is Music21?
music21 is an open-source Python toolkit designed to help musicians, music scholars, and researchers analyze, search, manipulate, and transform musical scores. Some of the key features of music21 include:
- Parsing and processing musical scores in formats like MusicXML, MIDI, **kern, and more
- Identifying musical elements like chords, melodies, parts, time signatures, keys, etc.
- Analyzing music theoretically and computationally to study patterns, structures, statistics, and correlations
- Flexible exporting options to generate graphs, plots, markup scores, recordings, and other creative outputs
- A large corpus of musical works to use for computational analysis and experimentation
- Tools for searching, filtering, transforming musical data according to sophisticated criteria
- Compatibility with other Python libraries for extended analysis capabilities
With its comprehensive toolkit, music21 makes an excellent platform for computational musicology tasks like corpus analysis, computational music theory research, algorithmic composition applications, and intuitive musical interfaces. It has an active development community contributing new analysis and data extraction tools continually.
Music21 Features
Features
- Music notation input and output
- Key signature and pitch spelling analysis
- Chord identification
- Melodic interval analysis
- Motivic analysis and searching
- Time series analysis and graphing
- Lead sheet generation
Pricing
- Open Source
Pros
Open source and free
Wide range of analysis features
Support for many music notation formats
Active development community
Integrates with other Python libraries
Cons
Steep learning curve
Limited documentation and examples
Some features are experimental or incomplete
Limited native audio analysis features
Official Links
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