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Automatic melody harmonization with triad chords: A comparative study — arXiv

Revision c1aedff8-46b1-4460-bb5f-1ed9f32ab7fe · 11/1/2026, 5:14:58 PM UTC
Key
yeh2021-melody-harmonization
Authors
Yeh, Yin-Cheng; Hsiao, Wen-Yi; Fukayama, Satoru; Kitahara, Tetsuro; Genchel, Benjamin; Liu, Hao-Min; Dong, Hao-Wen; Chen, Yian; Leong, Terence; Yang, Yi-Hsuan
Issued
2021-4-27
Type
article
Container
arXiv
Raw CSL JSON
{
  "URL": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.02360",
  "type": "article",
  "title": "Automatic melody harmonization with triad chords: A comparative study",
  "author": [
    {
      "given": "Yin-Cheng",
      "family": "Yeh"
    },
    {
      "given": "Wen-Yi",
      "family": "Hsiao"
    },
    {
      "given": "Satoru",
      "family": "Fukayama"
    },
    {
      "given": "Tetsuro",
      "family": "Kitahara"
    },
    {
      "given": "Benjamin",
      "family": "Genchel"
    },
    {
      "given": "Hao-Min",
      "family": "Liu"
    },
    {
      "given": "Hao-Wen",
      "family": "Dong"
    },
    {
      "given": "Yian",
      "family": "Chen"
    },
    {
      "given": "Terence",
      "family": "Leong"
    },
    {
      "given": "Yi-Hsuan",
      "family": "Yang"
    }
  ],
  "issued": {
    "date-parts": [
      [
        2021,
        4,
        27
      ]
    ]
  },
  "number": "2001.02360v3",
  "container-title": "arXiv"
}

Claims

  1. Automatic melody harmonization generates a sequence of chords to accompany a given melody; it is challenging because a melody can be harmonized in many ways and what is pleasant is subjective and genre-dependent. Yeh and colleagues compared template-matching, hidden Markov model, genetic algorithm, and deep learning approaches on 9,226 melody/chord pairs with up to 48 triad chords, with a listening study of 202 participants. Deep learning models generally performed better; a model accounting for chord function performed best and did not differ significantly from human-composed progressions in interestingness or overall rating, while the genetic algorithm was the most interesting of the other automatic methods.
    "the task of automatic melody harmonization, in which a model aims to generate a sequence of chords to serve as the harmonic accompaniment of a given multiple-bar melody sequence. [...] including a template matching based model, a hidden Markov based model, a genetic algorithm based model, and two deep learning based models. The evaluation is conducted on a dataset of 9,226 melody/chord pairs we newly collect for this study, considering up to 48 triad chords [...] and a subjective study with 202 participants. [...] Melody harmonization is a challenging task as there are multiple ways to harmonize the same melody; what makes a particular harmonization pleasant is subjective, and often dependent on musical genre and other contextual factors. [...] For Interestingness, GA performs the best among the five automatic methods [...] there is significant performance difference between the MTHarmonzer progressions and the original human-composed progressions in terms of Coherence and Chord Progression [...], but no significant difference in terms of Interestingness and Overall. [...] Our evaluation shows that deep learning models indeed perform better than non-deep learning ones in a variety of aspects, including harmonicity and interestingness. Moreover, a deep learning model that takes the function of chords into account reaches the best result among the evaluated models."
    Locator: section: Abstract, 1, 6, 7 · Quote language: en
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