Exploring J-DISC: Some Preliminary Analyses

Abstract

J-DISC, a specialized digital library for information about jazz recording sessions that includes rich structured and searchable metadata, has the potential for supporting a wide range of studies on jazz, especially the musicological work of those interested in the social network aspects of jazz creation and production. This paper provides an overview of the entire J-DISC dataset. It also presents some exemplar analyses across this dataset to better illustrate the kinds of uses that musicologists could make of this collection. Our illustrative analyses include both informetric and network analyses of the entire J-DISC data which comprises data on 2,711 unique recording sessions associated with 3,744 distinct artists including such influential jazz figures as Dizzy Gillespie, Don Byas, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Kenny Dorham, etc. Our analyses also show that around 60% of the recording sessions included in J-DISC were recorded in New York City, Englewood Cliffs (NJ), Los Angeles (CA) and Paris during the year of 1923 to 2011. Furthermore, our analyses of the J-DISC data show the top venues captured in the J-DISC data include Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Birdland and Reeves Sound Studios. The potential research uses of the J-DISC data in both the DL (Digital Libraries) and MIR (Music Information Retrieval) domains are also briefly discussed.