Visual Overviews for Sheet Music Structure

Abstract. We propose different methods for alternative represen- tation and visual augmentation of sheet music that help users gain an overview of general structure, repeating pat- terns, and the similarity of segments. To this end, we ex- plored mapping the overall similarity between sections or bars to colors. For these mappings, we use dimensionality reduction or clustering to assign similar segments to simi- lar colors and vice versa. To provide a better overview, we further designed simplified music notation representations, including hierarchical and compressed encodings. These overviews allow users to display whole pieces more com- pactly on a single screen without clutter and to find and navigate to distant segments more quickly. Our prelimi- nary evaluation with guitarists and tablature shows that our design supports users in tasks such as analyzing structure, finding repetitions, and determining the similarity of spe- cific segments to others