BriFormer - Dashboard

Create Create a new BriForm using an audio file on your device.

Create Create a new BriForm using a YouTube link

Open Open an existing BriForm analysis from a .briform file

Current Version: 1.2

Examples

"Main Title" Batman (1989)

Danny Elfman

"Defying Gravity" from Wicked

Stephen Schwartz

"Diamonds"

Rhianna

Intermezzo in A major, Op. 118, No. 2

Johannes Brahms

Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 49, No. 1, IV (mm 1-28)

Mendelssohn

"Look What You Made Me Do"

Taylor Swift

Piano Sonata in A minor, K. 310, I

Mozart

"Parto Parto" from La Clemenza di Tito

Mozart

Tutorial

Click here to watch a brief tutorial

Feedback

Your feedback with bugs would be greatly appreciated! If you have feedback, please submit it with the Google Forms survey at this link. Thanks!

Keyboard Shortcuts

Previous Versions

• 0.0 Initial Version ("Beta 1") - New Audio - New YouTube - Load Analysis

About BriFormer

BriFormer was created by me, Brian Edward Jarvis, to facilitate the study and joy of formal analysis of music in essentially any style and to make it possible to share analyses between anyone who might be interested. Like many others, I was really inspired by Brent Yorgason's Audio Timeliner (a.k.a. Variations Audio Timeliner). The experience of engaging with formal analysis from a primarily aural perspective was inspiring and exciting and helped broaden my understanding of what the analysis of musical form could be. Musical form is often studied within the context of a single style of music, but Yorgason's program showed me that a more universal approach was possible and powerful.

After studying musical form and phrase structure from the books and articles of some of my favorite music theorists (William Rothstein, James Hepokoski & Warren Darcy, Janet Schmalfeldt, William Caplin, and Mark Richards) and doing some research of my own with my colleague John Peterson, I realized Audio Timeliner lacked a number of details and features I needed to accurately convey my musical analyses (and it stopped working on my computer ...). For example, I needed to convey when phrases elide, when they are auxiliary sections and not core sections, and I also wanted a way to analyze music that I didn't own and I wanted a modern way to share analyses online.

However, those issues weren't nearly enough motivation to create a whole new program. The real motivation to actual dive into the project came when I decided to overhaul my Form & Analysis course at my University (The University of Texas at El Paso). I had grown tired of using existing materials that focused on such a small amount of the world's music and wanted to increase student engagement by allowing my students to pick the music they wanted to analyze instead me telling them which music to analyze. To do that, I had to create BriFormer and establish a general approach to musical form to accompany it. You can find my writings about "Musical Form in General" here.

My love of musical analysis began when my classes included music that I wanted to know more about and already liked. As a primarily classical pianist that played mostly tonal music, the textbooks were filled with music from my repertoire and I loved learning about it. However, most musicians aren't classical pianists so they aren't being engaged in the same way. Another major motivation for creating this program and changing my course was to allow the students to study and share the music they love, instead of studying the music someone else loves. The change has resulted in a major shift in student enjoyment, engagement, and the students now really enjoy formal analysis and I couldn't be happier about that change. My wonderful Fall 2020 class has been incredibly helpful in stress testing the program and helping to find bugs and I couldn't be more grateful for their help and patience with the development of BriFormer. Thanks, Everyone! 😁

Copyright © 2022 by Brian Edward Jarvis - All rights reserved

Change Log

• 1.2 Update: (11/06/2022)

  • Presentation Mode
    • A new, non-editing mode is now available. There is a new toggle on the top right of the program that switches between editing mode (the normal mode) and presentation mode (the new mode). Presentation mode only shows a few buttons and prevents editing. If you save a BriForm file with presentation mode on, it will open up in presentation mode when re-opened but anyone can still return to editing mode by flipping the toggle again. The color scheme changes when in presentation mode to provide a visual alert in case it is hit by accident.
  • Play from beginning of Selected Group
    • When you have one and only one group selected, you can now click a new play button that moves the audio playhead to the beginning of that group and starts playing from there. A keyboard shortcut can also be used for this: Hold Control and press space
  • Save as Image Improved
    • This has produced inconsistent results in the past, which is why the buttons says "Partially Broken." It's improved now, but I'm seeing inconsistent results on iOS. The file seems to download but you can't open it. Usually, simply trying again works, but not always.
  • iOS Refresh issue fixed
    • iOS has a pull to refresh feature in Safari but that can lead to erasing the entire analysis so pull to refresh has been disabled.
  • HTML in text boxes and text commentary areas
    • The text boxes now use raw HTML instead of raw text. This won't affect most people, but if you want more control over your text you can now write things like:
      • This word is <b>bold</b> : will show as: This word is bold
      • This word is <span style="color:green;">green</span> : will show as: This word is green
      • This word is <span style="font-size: 25px;">larger</span> than the others : will show as: This word is larger than the others
    • If you don't know HTML very well, you can use an HTML generator online and just paste the text in.
  • Menu Title Changes
    • The "Save/Load" menu is now "Share" and the "Commentary" menu is now "Comments"
  • "Save to Browser" has been disabled
    • There was an option to save your analysis to the browser but there were some important drawbacks like lack of available storage and the save was site wide, so if you started on a new analysis and then loaded from the browser it would load your old one in which was odd. I liked this feature so maybe it'll return in the future.
  • Skipping through audio now has a finer option
    • You can already skip through the audio/video in ten second intervals by pressing the left or right arrow keys, but now, when you hold Shift while pressing left or right, it will move in 1 second intervals.
  • Repeat Symbol added: ⁒
    • William Caplin uses a ⁒ symbol for repeats so it's been added to the Special Symbols area in the text menu.
  • Font selector changes based on font of each text box
  • Text boxes can be moved around on the diagram, pixel by pixel, by pressing the new ↑ ↓ ← → buttons in the text menu.
  • Issues with Marker Text being finicky have been resolved
  • "Unselect All" button at top is now an x with a circle
  • Keyboard Navigation Upgrades
    • Select Group with Keyboard:
      • You can now navigate the diagram and select single groups using the keyboard. On Windows, hold Control and press the arrow keys to move around the diagram. On MacOS, hold Control and Command and use the arrow keys.
    • Select Multiple Groups with Keyboard
      • You can also select multiple groups using the keyboard. Adding shift to the "Select Group with Keyboard" command above will select multiple groups.

• 1.1 Update: (08/29/2022)

  • Markers
    • Markers can now be placed throughout the analysis. They are unrelated to the rest of the grouping structure and they can be annotated with text above, below, left, and right and they can hold commentary.
  • Commentary
    • A new commentary feature has been added. All groups and markers can now hold commentary that will only show on the commentary tab. The commentary is shown hierarchically so the commentary of higher groups will be shown above lower groups. The marker commentary will always be at the bottom (if it exists).
  • QR Code Sharing
    • Analyses can now be shared via QR codes. QR codes can also be downloaded as PNG files.
  • Undo Bug Fixed
    • There was a bug that would appear when working with multiple analyses at the same time in different tabs. The Undo/Redo mechanism is now isolated to the particular analysis being worked on.
  • Colors Area Updated
    • Switch added at the top of the Colors tab to make it easy to switch back and forth between outline color and background color.
  • 1 New Shape Type
    • Solid top with no beginning shape that ends with a dot.
  • 3 New Special Symbols for Denoting Temporal Function
    • Beginning Arrow: ➚
    • Middle Arrow: ➙
    • Ending Arrow: ➘