An Integrated Music Chromaticism Model

The evolutional course of music through centuries has shown an incremental use of chromatic variations by composers and performers for melodies’ and music sounds’ enrichment. This paper presents an integrated model, which contributes to the calculation of musical chromaticism. The model takes into account both horizontal (melody) and vertical chromaticism (harmony). The proposed perceptually based measures deal with music attributes that relate to the audience’s chromatic perception. They namely are: the musical scale, the melodic progress, the chromatic intervals, the rapidity of melody, the direction of melody, music loudness, and harmonic relations. This theoretical framework can lead to semantic music visualizations that reveal music parts of emotional tension. Key-Words: -chromaticism, harmonic relations, emotional tension, perception of music chroma, chromatic index, chromatic intervals, music visualization