The MPB Corpus: A Dataset of Melody, Rhythm, Harmony, and Melody-Harmony Relationships in Brazilian Popular Music
Authors: Carlos de L. Almada, Hugo T. de Carvalho, Felipe D. Martins
Organizations: School of Music, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil · Department of Statistical Methods, Institute of Mathematics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil · Institut für Theorie und Geschichte, Anton Bruckner Universität, Linz, Austria.
PLEASE CHECK AND REFER TO THE PUBLISHED VERSION OF THIS PAPER ON https://doi.org/10.5334/tismir.357 This paper presents the MPB Corpus, a dataset of Brazilian Popular Music (Musica Popular Brasileira, MPB) comprising derived symbolic annotations for 500 pieces across four musical parameters -- melodic contour, melodic rhythm, harmony, and the melody-harmony relationship -- making it the most comprehensive dataset to date for computational musicology of Brazilian music. It is released under a CC-BY-4.0 license in an open, machine-readable tabular format, with documentation and reproducible analysis code. Because the annotations were derived from copyrighted musical scores, the corpus contains no audio recordings or score-level representations such as MIDI or MusicXML; it nonetheless provides a reusable resource for MIR research on a culturally significant repertoire that remains underrepresented in existing datasets. To support the encoding process, we introduce analytical models for capturing rhythmic and melodic information, along with tailored visualizations and summary metrics. Finally, we present a brief exploratory analysis illustrating the dataset's potential for formulating and addressing musicological questions about the genre.
Figures & tables
Figure 1: Genus of protochord z0 depicted in three notations: genealogical (top left), chord-label (top right – using the symbol * as a generic root.), and musical (below – using “D” as the reference root).
Genera
Genealogical notation
Alphanumeric notation
Z
Z0
*M7
Y
Y0
*7
X
X0
*( \musFlat 5)7
W
W0
*( \musSharp 5)7
V
V0
z
z0
*m7
Table 1: The 10 protochords of the GCT model, considering genealogical and alphanumeric notations. The symbol * stands for a generic root.
Genera
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Total
Z
1
5
7
3
-
-
-
16
Y
1
4
9
14
16
13
2
59
X
1
3
5
6
4
-
-
19
W
1
2
3
3
1
-
-
10
V
1
4
5
2
-
-
-
12
z
1
3
4
3
-
-
-
11
Table 2: Distribution of CTs across the 10 genera (shown in the rows), considering a total of six possible generations (shown in the columns). The total number of variations for each genera across all the generations is displayed in the last column; the total number of variations in each generation across all genera is displayed in the last row.
Figure 2: Alphabet of c-letters, their description, and an illustration of the distances encoded by each letter, starting from the C note.
Figure 3: Alphabet of r-letters.
Figure 4: Structure of the CM7 scale (I in C major) and identification of its structural notes.
Figure 5: Basic scheme of the NF web in major mode.
Figure 6: Example of the analytical process: a) excerpt being analyzed; b) segmentation of the melody; c) harmonic analysis; d) relation between melody and harmony; e) NF web of this excerpt. For more details on the notation, see Section 3 .
corpus_id
Composer’s artistic name
JOBIM
Tom Jobim
LINS
Ivan Lins
CHICO
Chico Buarque
EDU
Edu Lobo
CAETANO
Caetano Veloso
DJAVAN
Djavan
Table 3: Correspondence between the abbreviated corpus names (column “corpus_id” within all the .csv files of the dataset) and the artistic names of the respective composers.
Figure 7: Bar chart showing the proportion of each r-letter in each examined corpora.
1
4
5
7
9
10
Bosco
31.5
17.0
6.7
18.1
7.1
20.2
Caetano
37.6
10.9
4.7
27.9
4.5
14.4
Chico
29.6
18.0
3.2
23.8
3.3
22.1
Djavan
29.3
17.6
4.5
23.7
4.4
20.5
Edu
40.7
8.3
5.5
27.6
5.5
12.4
Gil
32.3
17.1
1.5
25.8
2.2
21.0
Table 4: Metric profile by analyzed corpus, in percentage. The columns contain only the attack points present in the corpora. Percentages in bold correspond to the most prominent attack point on each corpus.
c
e
g
m
n
p
u
Total
Bosco
3.9
7.6
6.5
0.6
14.8
1.2
1.6
36.2
Caetano
1.6
11.7
3.8
1.3
2.8
2.1
2.1
25.4
Chico
3.2
9.5
4.5
1.1
16.3
2.2
2.3
39.2
Djavan
4.5
9.9
7.2
2.1
10.3
3.8
3.1
40.9
Edu
0.2
12.6
2.8
0.6
3.4
1.1
1.5
22.3
Gil
2.8
7.8
6.1
1.9
11.8
3.2
1.5
35.0
Table 5: Distribution of countermetric r-letters by corpus, in percentage. The last column shows the total occurrence of these r-letters for each composer. The most prominent countermetric r-letter in each corpus is highlighted in bold.
Word length
CIEI
CMI
MAI
Bosco
8
0.856
0.559
0.704
Caetano
7
0.873
0.463
0.721
Chico
6
0.887
0.564
0.704
Djavan
6
0.863
0.558
0.643
Edu
8
0.867
0.463
0.623
Gil
8
0.880
0.552
0.714
Table 6: Statistics related to melodic contour, melodic rhythm, and the relationship between melody and harmony. The columns represent, respectively: length of the most common c- and r-word, CIEI, CMI, and MAI indexes.
Figure 8: Bar chart showing the proportion of each c-letter in each examined corpora.
Figure 9: Bar chart showing the proportion of each chord genera in each examined corpora.
Figure 10: Bar chart showing the proportion of the most common chord functions in each examined corpora.
Figure 11: Bar chart showing the proportion of each note function in each examined corpora.
Figure 12: NF web of two pieces: Saúde , by Rita Lee (left panel), and Angela , by Tom Jobim (right panel). Their respective MAI are displayed above the webs.
Figure 13: Empirical null distribution of the statistic R obtained from 10,000 permutation samples, shown as a histogram. The red vertical line indicates the observed value Robs .
Integrative Sciences and Engineering Programme, NUS Graduate School · School of Computing, National University of Singapore · Singapore American School