The text discusses using Python, MIDI, and Matplotlib to analyze music and help beginners find the right instrument to learn piano. It explores extracting musical notes from MIDI files, visualizing note distribution using Matplotlib, and understanding the range of keys needed for different music pieces. The tutorial aims to aid beginners in data science and serve as a tool for analyzing music styles.
Finding an answer with Python, MIDI, and Matplotlib
Learning to play the piano is a challenging and fun process, but every novice will have a dilemma: what kind of instrument to buy? The choice in the market is wide, from the tiny two-octave instruments to full-size keyboards in a wooden cabinet. On the one hand, having extra keys will never hurt; on the other hand, there is always a trade-off between size, weight, and price.
Data Source
For data analysis, MIDI files will be used. The key feature of MIDI files is that they store the music not as raw audio but in the “original” notation form. Every record in a midi file contains the instrument type, pitch, timing, and other parameters.
Distribution
At this point, a method that extracts all musical notes from a set of MIDI files is available. A histogram in Matplotlib can be used to easily see which notes are used more often.
Visualization
A Matplotlib library can draw more than just scientific graphs. A piano keyboard can be drawn using Matplotlib, providing a much better visualization than a histogram.
A convenient way to visualize the distribution is to use a heatmap that can be drawn over the keyboard. This allows for a comparison of the styles of different pieces, different composers, or different genres.
Results
In this article, it is shown how to process MIDI files and make a musical note distribution in the form of a histogram and piano keyboard heatmap. It can be useful not only to answer a question like “How many keys do we need?” but also for larger analyses in the musicology or cultural anthropology domains.
As for piano lessons, it is evident that at least a 6-octave range is required to play music, even during the second year of study.
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