Humdrum Lab 2

This lab introduces the Essen Folksong Collection and some tools for analysis and data extraction from the collection.

Downloading a repertory from the collection

The data files for the Essen Folksong Collection can be browsed here:

    http://kern.ccarh.org/browse?l=/essen

The primary collection consists of about 5,000 German songs and 3,000 Chinese songs.

To download a particular sub-collection try:

     humsplit  h://essen/europa/deutschl/erk

This should download 1701 song files:

    $ wc -l *.krn 
    1701

Create a new directory with `mkdir` first to keep them all in one location, or download all songs to a single file with:

     humcat -s h://essen/europa/deutschl/erk

scaletype tool

A simple scale categorizing tool can list what sort of musical content the songs have:

   scaletype *.krn

Here is how to count each basic category of scaletype:

    scaletype -F *.krn | sortcount
    817	heptatonic
    583	hexatonic
    159	pentatonic
    108	chromatic
    33	toofew

The meaning of each category: `heptatonic` is 7 pitch classes, `hexatonic` is 6 pitch classes, `pentatonic` is 5 pitch classes, `chromatic` is more than 7 pitch classes and `toofew` is less than 5 pitch classes.

• Exercise: What scale degrees are missing in songs classified as `pentatonic`?

• Exercise: in the `toofew` how many pitch classes are there? (0, 1, 2, 3, or 4).