Music Search

So far in the series on music search, I've looked at systems which search for music using search terms as the primary access point (although with some of them it is clear that the music itself is used at some point e.g. OneLlama.

Themefinder is a completely different kettle of fish. It allows musical symbol search, on a local held and copyright protected database. The key thing with this service is that you have to have specialist music knowledge to be able to use it properly. Sadly I do not, there when search I ended up must typing what I thought might be a few interesting random examples.

Search is very structured, allowing search on Repetory (classical, folksong, renaissance and all), pitch, interval, scale degree, gross contour, refined contour, location of theme (beginning, anywhere), Key (any or specific key), mode (any, major, minor), and meter. A basic version is available with options to theme location only available.

I just did one search, thus:



This gave me one result:



I have no idea why.....

Basically all I did in the search was to keep trying things and refining my search until I got that one result. Looks like quite a useful tool if you know what you are doing!

Themefinder is a collaboration between CCARCH at Stanford University and
Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Laboratory at Ohio State University.

Posts in the series are available here.