Visual hierarchical key analysis

Abstract

Tonal music is often conceived of as progressing through a sequence of key regions, usually starting and ending in the tonic key, with a journey away from the tonic key somewhere in the middle of the piece. This article presents a visual method of displaying the musical key structure of a composition in a single picture. The hierarchical plots can also show the relative strength of these key regions and how they develop out of the chordal substrate of the music.