DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15352071
title: CANTO-JRP Dataset: Audio Pitch Extractions from the Josquin Research Project

description: The CANTO-JRP Dataset is based on compositions from the Josquin Research Project that were available on Spotify at the time this dataset was created. Due to copyright restrictions, the recordings are not publicly available. However, the dataset includes multiple f0 estimations (from various models), symbolic encodings, and metadata. CANTO-JRP is part of the CANTOSTREAM project. On Spotify, we created the CANTO-JRP playlist that is fully aligned with this dataset.

Please find a detailed description of the dataset in the README.md.

 

This dataset is described in our article:

Visscher, M., & Wiering, F. (2025). Fuzzy Frequencies: Finding Tonal Structures in Audio Recordings of Renaissance Polyphony. Heritage, 8(5), 164. https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage8050164

If you use this dataset for your reasearch please cite this paper.
description: General

This README.md file provides an overview of the CANTO-JRP Dataset, which is based on compositions from the Josquin Research Project, limited to those available on Spotify at the time the dataset was created. Due to copyright restrictions, the recordings themselves are not publicly available. Instead, the dataset includes multiple f0 estimations (from various models), symbolic encodings, and metadata.

Folder Structure

Each set of multiple f0 extractions is stored in its own folder. Due to their large size, these folders are compressed into separate tar.gz files. To use the data with the accompanying code from GitHub, download and extract the relevant folders into FuzzyFrequencies/data/raw/CANTO-JRP/. If you're only interested in the Multif0 extractions, you can download just the experiment_metadata.csv and the multif0.tar.gzip.

Folders and files in this dataset



195f

214c

basicpitch

MT3

multif0

symbolic

experiment_metadata.csv

README.md


Description of dataset items

This section provides an overview of the data in each folder, how the data should be used, and its purpose.




Folder
File types
Source
number of files
format




195f
Multipitch extractions, model 195f
Fuzzy Frequencies
637
CSV


214c
Multipitch extractions, model 214c
Fuzzy Frequencies
637
CSV


basicpitch
Basicpitch extractions
Fuzzy Frequencies
637
CSV


MT3
MT3 extractions
Fuzzy Frequencies
172
MIDI


multif0
Multif0 extractions
Fuzzy Frequencies
637
CSV


symbolic
Symbolic encodings
Josquin Research Project (JRP)
637
MusicXML




Note The number of MT3 extractions is lower than those from the other models. Due to the MT3 model’s lower performance on our dataset and the high computational cost, we only processed audio files smaller than approximately 10 MB.

File Types

Metadata

The file experiment_metadata.csv file contains information about each composition from the JRP that was available on Spotify at the time this dataset was created. This file serves both as a reference for users of the dataset and as a specification file for the GitHub code.




Field
Format
Description




id
integer
row identifier


nr_playlist
string
position(s) in the playlist


composer
string
composer's surname


composition
string
name of the composition


voices
integer
number of voices


experiment
string
experiment name, needed for the code


performer
string
performer(s) of the recording


Album
string
album name of the recording


year_recording
integer
year of recording


audio_final
integer
MIDI tone of the lowest note of the final chord


symbolic_is_audio
string
extent to which recording and encoding are the same (yes, almost, no)


instrumentation
string
instrumentation v(ocal) and (i)nstrumental


instrumentation_category
string
category of instrumentation (vocal, instrumental, mixed)


final_safe
string
extent to which the audio final is the same as the (transposed) encoded final (yes, no, pitch class profile)


not repeated
string
whether there is repetition of the encoding in the recording (yes, no)


repetitions
string
rough specification of the repetitions


comments
string
extra comments, mainly instruments used


symbolic
string
file name of the symbolic encoding


audio
string
file name of the recording


mf0
string
file name of the Multif0 extraction


basicpitch
string
file name of the Basicpitch extraction


multipitch_214c
string
file name of the Multipitch extraction, model 214c


multipitch_195f
string
file name of the Multipitch extraction, model 195f


MT3
string
file name of the MT3 extraction




Multipitch extraction

The Multipitch extractions include a column for each MIDI tone, with cell values representing the loudness of the pitch at a given timestamp.




Field
Format
Description




[empty]
integer
timestamp index, sample rate = 43.06640625


1
float
loudness of MIDI tone 1 + 24 = 25


..
..
..


71
float
loudness of MIDI tone 71 + 24 = 85




Basicpitch extraction

The Basicpitch extractions include a row for each detected note and its corresponding loudness.




Field
Format
Description




start_time_s
float
start time of the pitch in seconds


end_time_s
float
end time of the pitch in seconds


pitch_midi
integer
MIDI tone of the pitch


velocity
integer
MIDI equivalent of loudness


pitch_bend
inteher
multiple columns of microtonal pitch deviations




MT3 extraction

The MT3 extractions are provided in MIDI format (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). MIDI is an industry standard music technology protocol used to represent musical data and allow communication between musical devices. For more details, see the MIDI specifications.

Multif0 extraction

The Multif0 extractions do not have meaningful headers; the first column contains the timestamps, the subsequent columns contain 'voice' columns, without voice leading. By default, the leftmost voice column contains the lowest detected frequency.




Field
Format
Description




0.0
float
timestamp in seconds, time sample rate = 86.1328125


[empty]
float
frequency of the lowest voice at that time stamp, frequency sample rate = 20 cents


..
..
..


[empty]
float
frequency of the highest voice at that time stamp, frequency sample rate = 20 cents




Symbolic encoding

The symbolic encodings are provided in MusicXML format. For an introduction to this format, please see the MusicXML tutorial

Codebook

In this section, we specify for each file type how the data was collected or created.

For 611 out of the 902 works on the JRP website, usable recordings have been found on Spotify; these are collected in the Spotify playlist.

The Basicpitch extractions are created by applying the model by Bittner et al. (2022) [1] to the set of audio recordings.

The Multipitch extractions are created by applying the model by Weiß and Müller (2024) [4] to the set of audio recordings, with model 214c and 195f.

The MT3 extractions are created by extracting the audio files smaller than ~110 MB using the Colab notebook provided by Gardner et al (2022) [3].

The Multif0 extractions are created by applying the model by Cuesta et al. (2020) [2] to the audio files.

The symbolic encodings are downloaded from The Josquin Research Project

The files experiment_metadata.csv and README.md have been handcrafted by the first author.
description: Contribute



To report errors, e.g. in composition dates, please create an issue describing the error.

Contact me if you want to contribute data

Also do not hesitate to contact me for further questions: m.e.visscher@uu.nl


Cite

Finally, if you use the code in a research project, please reference it as:

Visscher, M., & Wiering, F. (2025). Fuzzy Frequencies: Finding Tonal Structures in Audio Recordings of Renaissance Polyphony. Heritage, 8(5), 164. https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage8050164

@article{visscher2025fuzzy,  title     = {Fuzzy Frequencies: Finding Tonal Structures in Audio Recordings of Renaissance Polyphony},  author    = {Visscher, M. and Wiering, F.},  journal   = {Heritage},  volume    = {8},  number    = {5},  pages     = {164},  year      = {2025},  doi       = {10.3390/heritage8050164},  url       = {https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage8050164}}