Spiral array model

Mathematical model used in music theory

In music theory, the spiral array model is an extended type of pitch space. A mathematical model involving concentric helices, it represents human perceptions of pitches, chords, and keys in the same geometric space. It was proposed in 2000 by Elaine Chew in her MIT doctoral thesis Toward a Mathematical Model of Tonality. Further research by Chew and others have produced modifications of the spiral array model, and, applied it to various problems in music theory and practice, such as key finding, pitch spelling, tonal segmentation, similarity assessment, and musical humor. The extensions and applications are described in Mathematical and Computational Modeling of Tonality: Theory and Applications.

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