chordgen

Generate synthetic note combinations from real audio

Folders

• Single Piano Notes: all of the Piano files from the University of Iowa Electronic Music Labs Dataset.
• Single Piano Notes (Trimmed): the same files as above, but with silence at the beginning and end removed. Does not include the pianissimo files, as they were too quiet to remove silence from.
• Simple Piano Chords (Trimmed): Each of the following chords using the named note as the root note. All notes in the chord are the same dynamic
  • Major
  • Minor
  • Diminished
  • Augmented
  • Major 7th
  • Minor 7th
  • Diminished 7th
  • Augmented 7th
  • Dominant 7th
  • Half-diminished 7th
  • Minor Major 7th
  • Major 6th
  • Minor 6th
• Simple Piano Intervals (Trimmed): Each of the following intervals using the names note as the root note. Both notes in the interval are the same dynamic
  • Minor 2nd
  • Major 2nd
  • Minor 3rd
  • Major 3rd
  • Perfect 4th
  • Tritone
  • Perfect 5th
  • Minor 6th
  • Major 6th
  • Minor 7th
  • Major 7th
  • Octave

Usage

Regenerating common chords and intervals

To regenerate common chords and intervals (from other recordings, redoing it yourself, etc.) call generate_chords or generate_intervals from get_chords.py. Chords/intervals will be generated automatically with the file naming convention of {instrument}.{dynamic}.{root note}.{chord/interval name}.aiff. (Note: this will take some time)

Creating new note combinations

To create other note combinations, call get_chord followed by save_chord_audio both from spectrograms.py.

get_chord requires 5 parameters: tonic, chord_type, octave, name, degrees, and returns two elements: chord and chord_name

• tonic: This is the letter name of the lowest note of your note combinations (A, Bb, B, C, Db, etc.. If you give a sharp, it will be converted to a flat)
• chord_type: If not one of the chords listed above, put None
• octave: The octave in which the root note (tonic) occurs (a number between 0-8. Make sure that the root note name occurs within this octave. There are only 3 notes with octave 0 and 1 with octave 8)
• name How your file will be distinguished. The file will be created with the naming convention {instrument}.{dynamic}.{root note}.{name}.aiff
• degrees: Not needed if one of the chords listed above. Otherwise the most important part. Must include 0 followed by the scale degree (1-12) of the other notes you wish to generate a combination with.

save_chord_audio requires 5 parameters: chord, chord_name, dynamic, input_dir, output_dir, and creates the file.

• chord: The first return value from get_chord
• chord_name: The second return value from get_chord
• dynamic: The dynamic (ff, mf, pp) in which to generate the files
• input_dir: The directory where the individual notes are stored
• output_dir: The directory in which to save the new file (Needs to exist already)

Example:

chord, name = get_chord('A', None, 4, 'demo', [0, 7, 11])
save_chord_audio(chord, name, 'ff', 'Single Piano Notes (Trimmed)', 'Test Combos')

Will generate a file in the folder Test Combos named Piano.ff.A4.demo.aiff that contains a combination of A4, E5, and Ab5.

Other

There are many other functions in spectrogram.py, mostly for creating and displaying spectrograms. Adding comments is a TODO. Hopefully relatively self-explanatory if needed, otherwise send me a message and I am happy to help