Statistical validation of composer-specific triadic-note distributions

Determine whether the apparent differences in the distributions of triadic structural notes among the Djavan, Edu Lobo, Tom Jobim, and Ivan Lins corpora are statistically significant, particularly the apparent exceptions involving Djavan, Edu Lobo, Tom Jobim, and Ivan Lins.

Background

The MPB Corpus encodes relationships between melody and harmony by classifying melodic notes according to their structural functions within the supporting chords. In the discussion of triadic structural notes—roots, thirds, and fifths—the authors observe broadly similar distributions across the ten composer corpora, but identify apparent deviations in the repertoires of Djavan, Edu Lobo, Tom Jobim, and Ivan Lins.

The paper does not establish whether these apparent differences reflect genuine stylistic distinctions or sampling variation. It explicitly leaves their confirmation to future statistical testing, making this an unresolved empirical question concerning composer-specific melody–harmony relationships in Brazilian Popular Music.