Comparative Analysis of Multiple Musical Performances

A technique for comparing numerous performances of an identical selection of music is described. The basic methodology is to split a one-dimensional sequence into all possible sequential sub-sequences, perform some operation on these sequences, and then display a summary of the results as a two-dimensional plot; the horizontal axis being time and the vertical axis being sub-sequence length (longer lengths on top by convention). Most types of timewise data extracted from performances can be compared with this technique, although the current focus is on beat-level information for tempo and dynamics as well as commixtures of the two. The primary operation used on each sub-sequence is correlation between a reference performance and analogous segments of other performances, then selecting the best correlated performances for the summary display. The result is a useful navigational aid for coping with large numbers of performances of the same piece of music and for searching for possible influence between performances.