Analysis, part 2: analysing the dataset yourself
Technical requirements: option 1
If you are an advanced user who wishes to use our variant analyser or NEXUS converter scripts yourself, please see Option 2 below.
Our most user-friendly approach is our customised Google Colab series. By going through our Colab pages, you will learn how to run analyses, how to read the data, and how to tweak the data for your own research interests. The only requirement is a Google account – everything else is available in the Colab pages!
To learn how to analyse the Texting Scarlatti dataset for your own purposes, please complete the following steps:
- Open our Google Colab series and follow the instructions.
- Our interactive environment consists of four parts:
- Getting started: unless you are an advanced user, we recommend you start here;
- NEXUS converter, part 1: learn how to use phylogenetic software in digital musicology;
- NEXUS converter, part 2: on how to adjust variant weights and how to identify their impact;
- NEXUS converter, part 3: develop your own bespoke weights and save these to use them in your own analyses.
Technical requirements: option 2 (advanced users only)
The following requirements are all available on our public GitHub repository (link available soon).
- Our dataset file (summary.json) which holds all the data on the 3,176 witnesses we analysed;
- The variant analyser and NEXUS converter scripts, as well as their dependencies (variant_regex.py, variants_to_nexus.csv, and the variant_patterns directory) and any modules specified in the files themselves.
Finally, if you are using the NEXUS converter script, you will need to install a phylogenetic software package to open and interpret the NEXUS files such as PAUP* or SplitsTree 6.
Jasper van der Klis, October 2025
