Commentary on "Comparative Analysis of Music Recordings from Western and Non-Western traditions by Automatic Tonal Feature Extraction" by Emilia Gómez, and Perfecto Herrera

Abstract

The article by Gómez and Herrera presents an original methodology, audaciously situated on a challenging junction between computer science, cognitive science and ethnomusicology. We hope expert ethnomusicologists will understand the experimental aspect of such a cross-disciplinary undertaking, and will pardon the potential imperfection in this computational attempt toward cross-cultural understanding. Despite the few shortcomings discussed in this commentary, we think the general methodology described in this paper is of high interest.