Measuring Information in Jazz Improvisation

Scott J. Simon School of Library and Information Science, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave, CIS1040, Tampa, FL 33620-7800. Email:[email protected]. Phone: 813.974.3521. Fax: 813.974.6840 The following interdisciplinary research explores the concept of entropy in jazz improvisation and demonstrates a method for measuring it utilizing standard music notation. Formulas are adapted to measure melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic entropy; analysis based on these formulas are then performed on several lead-sheets and transcriptions collected from an advanced jazz improvisation course. The results are shown to distinguish between degrees of improvisation on a theme, thus demonstrating their potential for representing jazz information for analysis and retrieval. The data sets are then examined for insights in music representation, music information retrieval, and future research. Introduction Music information and jazz improvisation are emerging topics in Music Information Retrieval (MIR), an area of research that explores a diverse range of subtopics including: computational methods of classification, clustering, and modeling; formal methods and databases; web software; human-computer interaction and interfaces; music perception; cognition and emotion; music analysis and knowledge representation; music archives and libraries; intellectual property rights; sociology and economy of music; and philosophical and ethical issues related to music. Music information retrieval is of interest to music performers, composers, educators, critics, historians, archivists and librarians, and recording industry representatives, as well as music consumers. As Melucci and Orio point out, there are essentially two forms of music information retrieval (see Figure 1): Data-based and content-based (2004).