Humdrum Lab 1

Bach Chorales

Download

A Humdrum Edition of the Bach Chorales is available at http://kern.ccarh.org/browse?l=371chorales

The data files can be downloaded using the humcat and humsplit commands:

    mkdir chorales
    cd chorales
    humcat -s h://370chorales | humsplit

This should create 370 files in the format chor001.krn, chor002.krn, chor003.krn, etc.

MIDI rendering

Convert a particular chorale into a MIDI file with this command:

    hum2mid chor001.krn -o chor001.mid

Key

Each chorale is hand-labeled with a musical key. To generate a histogram of key designations in the chorales:

  extract -f 1 *.krn | grep '\*.*:' | sort | uniq -c | sort

Questions:

1. What is the most common key?
2. What is the most common major key?
3. What is the most common minor key?
4. What is the least common major key (other than zero counts)?
5. What is the least common minor key (other than zero counts)?
6. How many chorales are labeled as being in a modal key?

Vocal Range

To count all of the notes by pitch-class for each vocal part, use the prange command. Here is a sample command which extracts the bass part data:

  extract -f 1 *.krn | prange

or alternatively extracting by text pattern (Bass, Tenor, Alto, Soprano):

   extractx -g Bass *.krn | prange

For the bass part, the lowest note is CC (C2) and the highest note is e (E4), with a total vocal range of 28 semitones. The average (base-12) pitch is E- (E-flat 3), which is both the mean and median.

Do a similar vocal range analysis on the other three parts.

Questions:

1. Which voice has the widest range?
2. What is the highest and lowest note for each vocal part.