CosmoNote is an interface used to mark musical structures created in performance. The focus is on the acoustic variations introduced by performers such as tempo and loudness variations, timing, pauses, and articulation. These variations serve to provide contrast and focus, and chunking to help make the music stream more comprehensible to the listener.

The CosmoNote interface provides tools that allow contributors to mark these types of prosodic structures in performed music. Here, you will be asked to mark boundaries communicated in the performed music.

What are you asked to do?

• Boundary annotations

  Please mark the boundaries that you hear in the music, and indicate the strength of each boundary. You may be presented with information layers such as the notes, tempo or loudness, but your ear should be your main guide.

  What is a boundary?

  Boundaries are time points that separate a music stream into segments representing coherent chunks of music, e.g. a complete musical idea or a musical thought. Boundaries not only separate a larger piece of music into smaller, meaningful units, they also help listeners make sense of the music.

  There are four levels of boundaries. They define entities at different time scales:

  1. Motives: Smallest indivisible succession of notes that may be delineated by accents
  2. Subphrases: Parts of a phrase, e.g. antecedent or consequent phrases
  3. Phrases: Complete self-contained musical statements
  4. Sections: A major structural unit comprising of a complete musical idea

  How do performers communicate boundaries?

  Performers may mark boundaries using pauses, stress, or contrast. For example, accents could mark the beginnings of groups of notes, pauses can separate musical ideas, phrases may be expressed by increasing then decreasing tempo and/or loudness, a change of timbre and loudness may mark the beginning of a new section.