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IJMSTA - Vol. 7 - Issue 1 - January 2025
ISSN 2612-2146
Pages: 12
Pattern Recognition of Note Progressions to Detect Musical Borrowing
Authors: Steven Walczak, Thomas E. Moore-Pizon
Categories: Journal
Abstract - The phenomenon of musical borrowing is a practice deeply embedded in the history of music composition. Classical composers, such as Handel, and contemporary musicians engaged in borrowing, often evident through imitations or direct use of musical elements. We develop and demonstrate a pattern recognition driven approach to identify note progression patterns and provide analytical evidence of borrowing. The note progression approach enables detection of borrowing irrespective of changes in pitch, key, or tempo. Our approach is demonstrated through analysis of 1008 songs from the Celtic music genre. The research addresses two key questions: the frequency of borrowing within the Celtic genre and the occurrence of self-borrowing among composers. The findings reveal prevalent borrowing practices, especially in Irish Celtic folksongs, where over 21% exhibit musical borrowing with similar self-borrowing frequencies. The study also introduces the concepts of primacy and recency effects in musical memory concerning borrowing behaviors. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the borrowing phenomena and provides a robust methodology for music researchers to gather analytical evidence of borrowing.
Keywords: Borrowing, Copyright, Music, Pattern recognition, Note progressions
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