Dig That Lick

Search for and explore jazz solo patterns in the Weimar Jazz Dataset

Two web applications for lick search and exploration in the Weimar Jazz Dataset are presented:

• Pattern History Explorer, to explore 653 common patterns with 11,630 instances from many different angles including score and audio snippets.
• a web interface for pattern search with many additional features

More information can be found in the accompanying paper Two web applications for exploring melodic patterns in jazz solos that has been accepted for the ISMIR 2018 conference.

Licks in the Literature of Jazz Research

by Gabriel Solis

Having completed a review of academic jazz literature from the 1970s to the present we have found considerable range of conception and use of the general topic of patterns in improvisation and a number of potentially testable hypotheses that our data set and analytical work might address. This paper offers a synthesis of key issues from that research, including: definitions and terminology to describe patterns; disciplinary frameworks in which the question of pattern is engaged; primary areas of debate; a note on the volume of datasets needed for this research; and testable hypotheses to consider. A substantial, but surely not comprehensive bibliography is attached.