Release of Corelli trio sonatas annotated by music theory experts ‒ DCML ‐ EPFL

At this year’s ISMIR (International Society for Music Information Retrieval) online conference we introduced a workflow paradigm for remote consensus building between expert annotators, and showcased one possible implementation by releasing a (nearly completed) Corelli dataset created with it. It includes the scores of 36 sonatas (opp. 1, 3, and 4) in MuseScore 3 format that include expert annotations of harmony, phrases, and cadences.

Corelli Op01n01a Annotated — A. Corelli, first movement from *Sonata a tre* op. 1, no. 1. The expert annotations are included in the MuseScore files but also available as separate TSV files. Corelli’s thorough bass figures were considered during the analysis.

The conference paper focuses on the new workflow paradigm which applies the idea of distributed version control ubiquitous in software development (e.g. in the form of Git) in order to create fully validated and verified labels while automating tedious and repetitive tasks. The DCML’s implementation uses GitHub Actions to trigger Python scripts upon particular events (red boxes in the figure):

Ismir Workflow Paradigm Final — Schema of the workflow paradigm. The DCML implementation on GitHub can easily be adopted and adapted.

For a small run through you can watch this 4-minute pitch:

The code of our GitHub implementation of the paradigm is open to the public and can be re-used by referring to this manual. For more detailed information, please refer to the paper:

Hentschel, J., Moss, F. C., Neuwirth, M., & Rohrmeier, M. A. (2021). A semi-automated workflow paradigm for the distributed creation and curation of expert annotations. Proceedings of the 22nd International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, ISMIR, 262–269. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.5624417