Machine learningTonal analysis

Harmonic Analysis in Music

Harmonic analysis is the computational study of chord progressions, harmonic function, and tonal relationships in music. Formalized for audio by Pardo and Birmingham (2002), it goes beyond simple chord identification to interpret harmonic role and structure. Harmonic analysis is essential for music theory education, compositional understanding, and music generation systems. It requires understanding both the chords themselves and their functional relationships within a tonal context.

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Sources

  1. Pardo, B., & Birmingham, W. P. (2002). Algorithms for chordal analysis. Computer Music Journal, 26(4), 27-49. DOI: 10.1162/014892602320319382
  2. Pauwels, G., Salamon, J., Gómez, E., & Ryckebusch, P. (2015). Automatic chord estimation from audio using a Deep Neural Network trained on music theory. In Proceedings of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference. link
  3. Chen, T. P., Tan, A. H., & Zhu, S. (2012). Speech emotion recognition using robust temporal dynamics-based feature extraction methods. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Neural Information Processing. link

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ScholarGateHarmonic Analysis in Music (Harmonic Analysis and Harmonic Function Identification Algorithm). Retrieved 2026-06-04 from https://scholargate.app/en/music-information-retrieval/harmonic-analysis-music