# SMUG-Explain: A Framework for Symbolic Music Graph Explanations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.09241 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.09241/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 15 May 2024.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [MUSE-Explainer: Counterfactual Explanations for Symbolic Music Graph Classification Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26521/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this work, we present Score MUsic Graph (SMUG)-Explain, a framework for generating and visualizing explanations of graph neural networks applied to arbitrary prediction tasks on musical scores. Our system allows the user to visualize the contribution of input notes (and note features) to the network output, directly in the context of the musical score. We provide an interactive interface based on the music notation engraving library Verovio. We showcase the usage of SMUG-Explain on the task of cadence detection in classical music. All code is available on https://github.com/manoskary/SMUG-Explain.