Chord character evaluation model based on harmoniousness: Application to music mood visualization interface

The chord, along with melody and rhythm, is one of the important elements in constituting music, but the cause of music´s psychological effects are, for the most part, yet to be clarified. There are previous studies that define chord characters on the basis of the levels of dissonance, tension and modality, but there is not enough research to discuss psychological indexes which is called chord´s “brightness.” Therefore, in this study, in order to define a chord character evaluation based on harmoniousness, we propose a method for estimating the impression of brightness in chords. Evaluation experiments were performed in order to validate the proposed method. As a result, a strong correlation was found between the proposed degree of harmoniousness (H) and the results of psychological experiments. Furthermore, through the application of these results, an interface for representing musical mood through color was developed.