Can Beautiful Music be Recognized by Computers ? Nature , Music , and the Zipf – Mandelbrot Law

We discuss the application of the Zipf–Mandelbrot law to musical pieces encoded in MIDI. Specifically, we have identified a set of metrics on which to apply this law. These metrics include pitch of musical events, duration of musical events, the combination of pitch and duration of musical events, and several others. Our hypothesis is that these metrics will allow us to computationally identify and perhaps emphasize aesthetic aspects of music. We have developed a system that automates calculation of these metrics in MIDIencoded pieces. Using this tool we conducted a study on a corpus of 220 pieces from baroque, classical, romantic, 12tone, jazz, rock, DNA strings, and random music. Our results support the above hypothesis. We discuss limitations, and how to minimize the potential for statistical error through composite metrics. We present possible applications and an overview of preliminary work in computer–aided music composition.