A music taxonomy

Page 1

open day 07 OCTOBER 2011

FRANCESCO FAGGIANO


Talking about music is not as easy as it sounds. I have spent much time to browse, learn and practice this form of expression for many years but I always have found a limit preventing me from understanding the complexity of this phenomenon.


MUSIC EVOLUTION (D minor)

Tracing an evolutionary line of music phenomenon. I want to explore and trace a music evolution to make this complexity clear. This means I must analyze its variations, i.e. its styles and genres, developed throughout its history.


MUSIC GENRE MAP OR TAXONOMY OR VISUALIZATION GOOGLE GOOGLE SEARCH SEARCH

I’M I’M FEELING FEELING LUCKY LUCKY

Music taxonomies on the internet. I started a research about music visualization, trying to find out how music is told and the actual dimension of genre problem.


There’s no unique method. The music industry has long created music taxonomies for its own needs. No effort, to our knowledge, has been done to unify these taxonomies, and indeed the task would be quite considerable.


BLUES

ROCK

REGGAE

Actual taxonomies purpose. Several taxonomies of musical genres have been designed by Internet music retailers. These taxonomies are all aimed at helping users navigate in music catalogues using a topdown approach.


It’s hard to sort unstructured data but... I want to establish a method to follow as closely as possible actual considerations of music.



AMAZON

ALLMUSIC

DISCOGS

RHAPSODY

RATE YOUR MUSIC

WIKIPEDIA

183

681

332

458

1086

1787

First step: the need of a Data basin. No site contains a complete list of musical genres and styles. Looking at most famous music databases I obtained an exellent list of results, cleaning up terms and repetition.


I NEED TO ORGANIZE

2970 UNIQUE TERMS

Second step: choosing topics of evaluation. Currently the classification of music consists in detecting certain stylistic, chronological, geographical, cultural and sociological characteristics of each musical expression.


REGION

PERIOD

INSTRUMENT

ETHNIC

SUBREGION

DECADE

USE

CULTURE

COUNTRY

YEARS

LISTENER

PLACE

YEAR

MACROGENRE

or Continent UN classification Political classification Town or Area

LATITUDE/LONGITUDE Geographic localization

hystorical classification 10 years range Decade sub-range Starting year

Technical classification Aim of the music

Ethnic group origin Cultural/Geographical origin

Philip Tagg classification The main genre related

TAG

Still undefined classification

Third step: choosing parameters for classification. Each of these areas consider some parameters to better characterize any single musical style, describing it from the general to the particular.


LAST.FM TAG

REFERENCES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Other parameters for further development. I selected some other parameters that I need for further utilization in the second phase of the project.


1st

COLLECT

MAKE DISTINTION ORGANIZE STYLES ORGANIZE GENRES

2nd

VISUALIZE

IMPORT THE DATA CREATE THE NETWORK STUDY THE LAYOUT

3rd

DEVELOP

COMING SOON

The long road to the taxonomy. By now my work will follow some basic step to reach its completion.


AFROBEAT

1967

LAGOS, NIGERIA

FELA KUTI YORUBA

CONTEMPORARY FOLK

Better if dynamic. I would my taxonomy dynamic, and available for further developments.



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