Towards a Graphical User Interface for Quantitative Analysis in Digital Musicology

Abstract

We introduce the first prototype of a web application for digital musicology: BeyondTheNotes (working title). The goal of the tool is to support the in-depth analysis of individual pieces of music as well as the large scale analysis and comparison of summative features of multiple pieces of music. In contrast to existing tools, BeyondTheNotes is ready to use without installation, enables the upload and analysis of own material and offers different visualizations of musical metrics like chords, pitches, durations and key. We design the tool according to the User Centered Design Approach to improve the usability and address the specific needs of musicologists. We describe the results of the requirement analysis and discuss future steps.