Colorscore -- Visualization and Condensation of Structure of Classical Music

It is not always easy to quickly understand musical structure of orchestral scores for classical music works, because these works contain many staves of instruments. This paper presents Color score, a technique for visualization and condensation of musical scores. Color score supports two requirements for composers, arrangers and players: overview and arrangement. Color score divides each track of the score into note-blocks, and determines their roles. Color score then displays all the note-blocks in one display space to provide the overview, so that novice people can quickly understand the musical structures. In addition, Color score supports vertical condensation which reduces the number of displayed tracks, and horizontal condensation which saves the display space. It is especially useful as hints to rearrange music for smaller bands.