ContourViz

This package uses music21 to process musical notation and creates a web-based visual representation of the melodic contour within the browser. It creates a stand-alone website within the current working directory called 'results'. It then serves this folder locally within the web browser, offering contour maps of either a single melody or all of the notation files within the passed folder path.

This library is an abstraction of a similar project presented at the 2016 Analytical Approaches to World Music conference in New York City. That set of contour maps, drawing from transcriptions of Moroccan malhun sung poetry, can be seen here <https://cjwit.github.io/malhun-contour/index.html>

Single contour map example

Multiple contour map example (rendered using a directory as described below)

To install:

>>> pip install contourviz

To use on the command line:

>>> # Navigate to an empty directory (or at least one without a folder called 'results')
>>> # Create a chart of multiple melodic contours
>>> chart-contours '/path/to/directory/full/of/xml/or/mxl/files'
>>>
>>> # Create a chart of a single melodic contour
>>> chart-single-contour '/path/to/file.xml'

For use within the Python interpreter:

>>> # Navigate to an empty directory (or at least one without a folder called 'results')
>>> testFile = '/path/to/file.xml'
>>> testPath = '/path/to/directory/full/of/xml/or/mxl/files'
>>>
>>> # Create a single contour line from a given file
>>> createDataFromFile(testFile)
>>>
>>> # Create a set of contour lines from all files in a given directory
>>> createDataFromDirectory(testPath)

This is the earliest stages of the project, and future updates include fixing the following issues:

• It currently only works with single line (monophonic) melodies.
• The Y axis currently does not render specific pitch names.
• When using the interpreter: after serving the file, the Python script does not return to the correct working directory. This may require exiting and reentering the interpreter or navigating the command line to repeat the process.