Figured Bass and Tonality Recognition

In the course of the WedelMusic project [15], we are currently implementing retrieval engines based on musical content automatically extracted from a musical score. By musical content, we mean not only main melodic motives, but also harmony, or tonality. In this paper, we first review previous research in the domain of harmonic analysis of tonal music. We then present a method for automated harmonic analysis of a music score based on the extraction of a figured bass. The figured bass is determined by means of a template-matching algorithm, where templates for chords can be entirely and easily redefined by the end-user. We also address the problem of tonality recognition with a simple algorithm based on the figured bass. Limitations of the method are discussed. Results are shown and compared to previous research. Finally, potential uses for Music Information Retrieval are discussed.