CantoCore: A new cross-cultural song classification scheme

Abstract

Classification of organisms and languages has long provided the foundation for studying biological and cultural history, but there is still no accepted scheme for classifying songs cross-culturally. The best candidate, Lomax and Grauer's "Cantometrics" coding scheme, did not spawn a large following due, in part, to concerns about its reliability. We present here a new classification scheme, called "CantoCore", that is inspired by Cantometrics but that emphasizes its "core" structural characters rather than the more subjective characters of performance style. Using both schemes to classify the 30 songs from the Cantometrics Consensus Tape, we found that CantoCore appeared to be approximately 80% more reliable than Cantometrics. Nevertheless, Cantometrics still demonstrated significant reliability for all but its instrumental characters. Future multidisciplinary applications of CantoCore and Cantometrics to the cross-cultural study of musical similarity, musical evolution, musical universals, and the relationship between music and culture will provide the true test of each scheme's value.

Toward a new comparative musicology

“…But even in situations where the boundaries of a song are indeed defined, the song might show strong heterogeneity of musical features (e.g., subsections that differ in style). In such situations, "multi-coding" is required (Lomax and Grauer 1968;Savage et al 2012), in which a song is classified as having not a single set of stylistic features but several (see Issue 1c below). This can of course create complications in the comparative analysis of songs.…”

“…While this is a tall order for any classification scheme, serious attempts have been made in this direction. Broad classification schemes, such as Hornbostel and Sachs's ([1914] 1961) instrument classification scheme, Lomax and Grauer's (1968) Cantometric song classification scheme, or the related CantoCore scheme of Savage et al (2012), provide more scope for cross-cultural comparison than regional classification schemes-such as the classical theory systems of Western scales, Indian ragas, or Arabic maqamat-that are designed to apply to the music of specific cultures. However, such culture-specific systems may provide more nuanced and appropriate measures when the scope of comparison is limited to specific regions.…”

“…Many phylogenetic models focus on the evolutionary relationship between music and language: Did the two evolve independently or in tandem? Enlightenment thinkers like Condillac and Rousseau argued strongly that these evolutions were intertwined, and more recent thinkers have adopted similar ideas, including the view that song and speech sit along a single musilinguistic continuum, rather than being completely independent processes (Brown 2000a;Mithen 2005;Savage et al 2012). Such an evolutionary hypothesis is in no way inconsistent with music and language having domain-specific features (Peretz and Coltheart 2003).…”

Identifying style-types in a sample of musical improvisations using dimensional reduction and cluster analysis.

“…The audiovisual improvisation samples were downloaded from the online test-battery database and were converted into audio-only files using a script in the Apple terminal. To classify the improvisations, we used a modified version of the musical-classification scheme CantoCore (Savage et al, 2012). The modified version consisted of 19 "characters" of musical structure for solo vocal improvisation.…”

“…The approach takes advantage of methods coming from classification theory and cluster analysis. In particular, our approach begins by classifying a large sample of musical improvisations using the musical classification scheme "CantoCore" (Savage, Merritt, Rzeszutek, & Brown, 2012) to understand the diversity of musical structures in the sample. Can-toCore is a multidimensional coding scheme that contains 26 characters of musical structure that span the broad domains of rhythm, pitch, syllable, texture, and form.…”