arXiv AI

Tonal parsimony in chord-sequence analysis: combining modulation cost and tonal vocabulary

arXiv:2606. 03459v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We study the assignment of local tonalities to chord sequences, a task useful for harmonic analysis, composition, and jazz-oriented improvisation.

arXiv Machine Learning
1d ago

CHORDONOMICON: A Dataset of 666,000 Songs and their Chord Progressions

Chordonomicon is a new dataset of over 666,000 song-level symbolic chord progressions, each annotated with structural parts such as verse, chorus, and bridge, as well as genre and release date. The dataset was compiled by scraping user-generated progressions from multiple sources and shows strong similarity to established prior datasets. The authors also provide a reproducible benchmark suite for next chord prediction, evaluating RNN, GRU, and LSTM models across various context windows and data scales, and find that structural part annotations consistently improve prediction performance.

By Spyridon Kantarelis, Ioannis Liolitsas, Konstantinos Thomas, Vassilis Lyberatos, Edmund Dervakos, Giorgos Stamou
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 31

How Far Should Tokenization Go? Predictive Effectiveness and Relational Losslessness

The paper proposes the Effectiveness–Losslessness Framework to guide tokenization in domains beyond language, using predictive codelength as a criterion. It introduces two boundaries: the Fact–Token Boundary, where observable structure should be encoded into tokens, and the Token–State Boundary, where context‑dependent relations should remain for model state rather than being pre‑tokenized. Experiments on symbolic music show that making musical time explicit and applying tonal‑frame canonicalization improve predictive performance, while fixed pitch coordinates and reversible BPE can increase predictive code length, indicating that carrier compaction alone does not guarantee better predictions.

By Yi Wang
arXiv AI
Aug 19

Why GPT-Style Models Do Not Directly Transfer to Symbolic Music: Compression in the Wrong Coordinate System

The paper explains why GPT‑style language models fail to transfer directly to symbolic music. It argues that success in language comes from tokenization that compresses data by creating a coordinate system where recurring patterns become predictable. For music, the authors propose that tokenization must build a predictively effective, relationally lossless coordinate system—defining Fact–Token and Token–State boundaries—to enable compression without sacrificing contextual freedom. Controlled experiments confirm that proper coordinate construction improves predictive compressibility, whereas mere sequence compaction does not.

By Yi Wang
arXiv AI
Jun 12

CMI-RewardBench: Evaluating Music Reward Models with Compositional Multimodal Instruction

arXiv:2603. 00610v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: While music generation models have evolved to handle complex multimodal inputs mixing text, lyrics, and reference audio, evaluation mechanisms have lagged behind.

By Yinghao Ma, Haiwen Xia, Hewei Gao, Weixiong Chen, Yuxin Ye, Yuchen Yang, Sungkyun Chang, Mingshuo Ding, Yizhi Li, Ruibin Yuan, Simon Dixon, Emmanouil Benetos
arXiv AI
Aug 20

Whole-Piece Training for Symbolic Music Language Models via Full-Horizon Compressed Recurrence

The paper introduces Whole-Piece Training for Symbolic Music Language Models using Full-Horizon Compressed Recurrence (FHCR), which maintains the full temporal horizon of recurrent memory while compressing its key-value representation to fit GPU limits. An evaluation diagnostic, KV-Reset Context Utilization (KRCU), demonstrates that full-horizon models retain long-range context beyond local windows, whereas limiting recurrent memory weakens this dependence. FHCR thus preserves long-range context utilization while significantly reducing recurrent memory cost, enabling efficient whole-piece modeling.

By Yungang Yi, Weihua Li, Matthew Kuo, Catherine Shi, Quan Bai
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 2

Artificial Rosetta Stone: Constrained Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) Reconstruction of Symbolic Raga Sequences via Order-k Markov Models

arXiv:2609. 01064v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reconstructing a damaged musical fragment is an inverse problem: the observed sequence contains partial information, while a raga encodes constraints limiting allowable completions.

By Saanvi Raghavendran (Abstract Math Institute), Abhishek Bhattacharjee (Abstract Math Institute)
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 21

Beyond Atomic Tokens: Factorizing Syllables for Language Model Pretraining

arXiv:2609. 21362v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Conventional tokenizers represent text as characters or statistically derived subwords, overlooking the internal phonological structure of syllables and often requiring large vocabularies.

By Nghia Hieu Nguyen, Thai Bao Huynh, Binh-An Dinh-Le, Phu Gia Hoang, Dat Tien Nguyen, Kiet Van Nguyen, Ngan Luu-Thuy Nguyen