Visualization of Tonal Harmony for Jazz Lead Sheets

Carey Bunks, Tillman Weyde, Aidan Slingsby, Jo Wood

Abstract: Jazz improvisation is the extemporaneous expression of melody, and musicians commonly base their performances on chord progressions given by lead sheets. It is standard practice to commit a progression to memory by analyzing it for common patterns. This paper presents a visualization design intended to help reduce the amount of cognitive work needed to assimilate a song's chords and harmonic patterns. It does this using color, shapes, and glyphs as visual variables to convey meaning about tonal centers, chord functions, and harmonic structure.