The MPB Corpus: A Dataset of Melody, Rhythm, Harmony, and Melody–Harmony Relationships in Brazilian Popular Music

Carlos de L. Almada; Hugo T. de Carvalho; Felipe D. Martins

doi:10.5334/tismir.357

The MPB Corpus: A Dataset of Melody, Rhythm, Harmony, and Melody–Harmony Relationships in Brazilian Popular Music

Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval

Volume 9 (2026): Issue 1

By: Carlos de L. Almada, Hugo T. de Carvalho and Felipe D. Martins

Open Access

|Oct 2026

Abstract

This paper presents the MPB Corpus, a dataset of Brazilian Popular Music (Música Popular Brasileira [MPB]) comprising derived symbolic annotations for 500 pieces across four musical parameters—melodic contour, melodic rhythm, harmony, and the melody–harmony relationship—making it the most comprehensive dataset to date for computational musicology of Brazilian music. It is released under a CC‑BY‑4.0 license in an open, machine‑readable tabular format, with documentation and reproducible analysis code. Because the annotations were derived from copyrighted musical scores, the corpus contains no audio recordings or score‑level representations such as MIDI or MusicXML; it nonetheless provides a reusable resource for MIR research on a culturally significant repertoire that remains underrepresented in existing datasets. To support the encoding process, we introduce analytical models for capturing rhythmic and melodic information, along with tailored visualizations and summary metrics. Finally, we present a brief exploratory analysis illustrating the dataset’s potential for formulating and addressing musicological questions about the genre.

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Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/tismir.357 | Journal eISSN: 2514-3298

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Language: English

Page range: 565 - 587

Submitted on: Nov 22, 2025

Accepted on: Aug 24, 2026

Published on: Oct 14, 2026

Published by: Ubiquity Press

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Keywords:

Brazilian Popular Music,

computational musicology,

Music Information Retrieval

© 2026 Carlos de L. Almada, Hugo T. de Carvalho, Felipe D. Martins, published by Ubiquity Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Volume 9 (2026): Issue 1