Conchord: An Application for Generating Musical Harmony by Navigating in the Tonal Interval Space

Abstract

We present Conchord, a system for real-time automatic generation of musical harmony through navigation in a novel 12-dimensional Tonal Interval Space. In this tonal space, angular and Euclidean distances among vectors representing multi-level pitch configurations equate with music theory principles, and vector norms acts as an indicator of consonance. Building upon these attributes, users can intuitively and dynamically define a collection of chords based on their relation to a tonal center (or key) and their consonance level. Furthermore, two algorithmic strategies grounded in principles from function and root-motion harmonic theories allow the generation of chord progressions characteristic of Western tonal music.