Visualization of Tonal Harmony for Jazz Lead Sheets

Abstract

Jazz improvisation is the extemporaneous expression of melody, and musicians commonly base their performances on chord progressions given by lead sheets. It is standard practice to commit a progression to memory by analyzing it for common patterns. This paper presents a visualization design intended to help reduce the amount of cognitive work needed to assimilate a song's chords and harmonic patterns. It does this using color, shapes, and glyphs as visual variables to convey meaning about tonal centers, chord functions, and harmonic structure.