{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/do-music-generation-models-encode-music","title":"Do Music Generation Models Encode Music Theory?","arxiv_id":"2410.00872","date":"2024-10-01","proceeding":null,"authors":["Megan Wei","Michael Freeman","Chris Donahue","Chen Sun"],"abstract":"Music foundation models possess impressive music generation capabilities. When people compose music, they may infuse their understanding of music into their work, by using notes and intervals to craft melodies, chords to build progressions, and tempo to create a rhythmic feel. To what extent is this true of music generation models? More specifically, are fundamental Western music theory concepts observable within the \"inner workings\" of these models? Recent work proposed leveraging latent audio representations from music generation models towards music information retrieval tasks (e.g. genre classification, emotion recognition), which suggests that high-level musical characteristics are encoded within these models. However, probing individual music theory concepts (e.g. tempo, pitch class, chord quality) remains under-explored. Thus, we introduce SynTheory, a synthetic MIDI and audio music theory dataset, consisting of tempos, time signatures, notes, intervals, scales, chords, and chord progressions concepts. We then propose a framework to probe for these music theory concepts in music foundation models (Jukebox and MusicGen) and assess how strongly they encode these concepts within their internal representations. Our findings suggest that music theory concepts are discernible within foundation models and that the degree to which they are detectable varies by model size and layer.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.00872v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.00872v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"do-music-generation-models-encode-music","repo_url":"https://github.com/brown-palm/syntheory","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"emotion-recognition","task_name":"Emotion Recognition"},{"task_slug":"genre-classification","task_name":"Genre classification"},{"task_slug":"information-retrieval","task_name":"Information Retrieval"},{"task_slug":"music-generation","task_name":"Music Generation"},{"task_slug":"music-information-retrieval","task_name":"Music Information Retrieval"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2410.00872","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2410.00872"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-24T18:15:14+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/brown-palm/syntheory","reach":null}],"summary":{"ran_draft_wrong":1},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":1,"ran":1,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":0,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"4c2e1684aa60999a","entry":"get_audio_file_path_from_sample_info","repo":"brown-palm/syntheory","repo_kind":"official","path":"embeddings/extract_embeddings.py","file_url":"https://github.com/brown-palm/syntheory/blob/HEAD/embeddings/extract_embeddings.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran_draft_wrong","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"OUTPUT_MISDECLARED","metamorphic_tier":"deterministic","behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"4c2e1684aa60999a"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}