ABSTRACT
The computer is widely used as an analytical tool, most obviously in business where spreadsheets are routinely used to track and forecast financial and inventory details. Similarly, musical statistics and patterns can be revealed using a computer. There are some dedicated musicologists working with specialized computing tools for musical analysis and some of these tools will be mentioned below, but music analysis on computer can also be done with more widely available software. It is possible to turn familiar music applications, such as sequencing, recording, and publishing tools, to the task of musical analysis by using the computer to capture music as MIDI data and use the visualization abilities of these applications to examine music using familiar displays such as common practice notation and piano-roll views. As well as using music applications for analysis, the comprehensive resources of spreadsheets can be used to do statistical analysis of music after converting notes or audio data to numbers. These familiar tools are more likely to be available in music education settings; however, it is worth examining the more specialized tools to understand what is possible and to support more advanced levels of study. This chapter covers the issues and processes of musical analysis with computers and explores the potentials and the pitfalls.
