CorpusDB: Software for Analysis, Storage, and Manipulation of Sound Corpora

Abstract

CorpusDB is a system for representing sound files and associated analysis metadata in a structured format. The formats and conventions used in conjunction with the database allow for representation of sound files and their processed variants; multiple, overlapping, hierarchical relationships between sound files and segments thereof; and connections between sounds, their transformations, and analysis metadata. The software described in this paper is a parallel implementation consisting of SuperCollider classes, Python classes, and a common data representation of corpora that allows for seamless sharing of data between the two complementary environments. Code examples and listings of multi-step algorithms are included that demonstrate the kinds of operations possible within this system.