Facilitating Creative Exploratory Search with Multiple Networked Audio Devices Using HappyBrackets

We present an audio-focused creative coding toolkit for deploying music programs to remote networked devices. It is designed to support efficient creative exploratory search in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT), where one or more devices must be configured, programmed and interact over a network, with applications in digital musical instruments, networked music performance and other digital experiences. Users can easily monitor and hack what multiple devices are doing on the fly, enhancing their ability to perform “exploratory search” in a creative workflow. We present two creative case studies using the system: the creation of a dance performance and the creation of a distributed musical installation. Analysing different activities within the production process, with a particular focus on the trade-off between more creative exploratory tasks and more standard configuring and problem-solving tasks, we show how the system supports creative exploratory search for multiple networked devices

Pre-training Music Classification Models via Music Source Separation

In this paper, we study whether music source separation can be used as a pre-training strategy for music representation learning, targeted at music classification tasks. To this end, we first pre-train U-Net networks under various music source separation objectives, such as the isolation of vocal or instrumental sources from a musical piece; afterwards, we attach a convolutional tail network to the pre-trained U-Net and jointly finetune the whole network. The features learned by the separation network are also propagated to the tail network through skip connections. Experimental results in two widely used and publicly available datasets indicate that pre-training the U-Nets with a music source separation objective can improve performance compared to both training the whole network from scratch and using the tail network as a standalone in two music classification tasks: music auto-tagging, when vocal separation is used, and music genre classification for the case of multi-source separation.Comment: 5 pages (4+references), 3 figures. ICASSP-24 submissio

Embodied Complexity in Choral Singing

Amateur musical ensembles draw participants from widely varying disciplines into shared artistic activity in a way that few other artforms do; in particular, choral music, in which bodies both create and directly receive sound, raises profound questions of how performers’ uniquely embodied creative approaches interact. Amateur choral singing therefore offers a lens into how musical creativity is distributed among, and emergent from, a diverse group of individuals. This article explores how the performance of indeterminate and improvisatory choral works offers a powerful example of this distributed creative agency via a network of sounding bodies. This article centres on a case study (March–October 2017) involving three British amateur choirs in the performance of improvisatory choral scores by Kerry Andrew (2005) and Cornelius Cardew (1968–70). Complexity Theory (Davis and Sumara 2006) offers a useful framework for understanding how creative impulses and constructions interact; both the vocal expression and corporeal receipt of these creative ideas occurs in an embodied way, drawing on dance and embodiment theory (Sheets-Johnstone 2009, Downey 2002). The research process and qualitative-data-processing methodology (Charmaz 2014) of the case study are described, before findings are laid out with a view to how they point towards ideas of embodied, complex interaction. These findings offer an important, and hitherto unexplored, view into how Complexity Theory (a common theoretical framework in other fields across the sciences and humanities) might usefully describe musical performance. In transcending attempts to atomise ensemble interaction according to shared intellectual knowledge and verbal communication, the complex, embodied interaction of diverse singers, through the physical connection of sound, might involve those singers in the distributed authorship of a musical work

Bendit_I/O: A System for Extending Mediated and Networked Performance Techniques to Circuit-Bent Devices

Circuit bending—the act of modifying a consumer device\u27s internal circuitry in search of new, previously-unintended responses—provides artists with a chance to subvert expectations for how a certain piece of hardware should be utilized, asking them to view everyday objects as complex electronic instruments. Along with the ability to create avant-garde instruments from unique and nostalgic sound sources, the practice of circuit bending serves as a methodology for exploring the histories of discarded objects through activism, democratization, and creative resurrection. While a rich history of circuit bending continues to inspire artists today, the recent advent of smart musical instruments and the growing number of hybrid tools available for creating connective musical experiences through networks asks us to reconsider the ways in which repurposed devices can continue to play a role in modern sonic art. Bendit_I/O serves as a synthesis of the technologies and aesthetics of the circuit bending and Networked Musical Performance (NMP) practices. The framework extends techniques native to the practices of telematic and network art to hacked hardware so that artists can design collaborative and mediated experiences that incorporate old devices into new realities. Consisting of user-friendly hardware and software components, Bendit_I/O aims to be an entry point for novice artists into both of the creative realms it brings together. This document presents details on the components of the Bendit_I/O framework along with an analysis of their use in three new compositions. Additional research serves to place the framework in historical context through literature reviews of previous work undertaken in the circuit bending and networked musical performance practices. Additionally, a case is made for performing hacked consumer hardware across a wireless network, emphasizing how extensions to current circuit bending and NMP practices provide the ability to probe our relationships with hardware through collaborative, mediated, and multimodal methods

Dislocated Sound: A Survey of Improvisation in Networked Audio Platforms

The evolution of networked audio technologies has created unprecedented opportunities for musicians to improvise with instrumentalists from a diverse range of cultures and disciplines. As network speeds increase and latency is consigned to history, tele-musical collaboration, and in particular improvisation will be shaped by new methodologies that respond to this potential. While networked technologies eliminate distance in physical space, for the remote improviser, this creates a liminality of experience through which their performance is mediated. As a first step in understanding the conditions arising from collaboration in networked audio platforms, this paper will examine selected case studies of improvisation in a variety of networked interfaces. The author will examine how platform characteristics and network conditions influence the process of collective improvisation and the methodologies musicians are employing to negotiate their networked experiences

Tele-improvisation : a multimodal analysis of intercultural improvisation in networked music performance

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.This thesis presents an interdisciplinary, practice-led framework for the analysis of intercultural musical interaction in tele-improvisation (musical improvisation via telecommunication systems). Recent developments in network technology and high-speed broadband have created unprecedented opportunities for hitherto improbable meetings between musicians of different cultures to improvise with one another across global distances. While network technology eliminates distance in geographical space, signifiers of presence such as co-located acoustics, gesture, facial expression and body language are not available to mediate this experience. Video streaming of dispersed locations and collaborators cannot replace the essential nuances of co-located performative interaction. Most research in this field has focused on improving technical and interactive network music performance, highlighting the need for an evaluative framework and language for revealing musicians creative and strategic thought-processes. This thesis examines the approaches and strategies that musicians develop to perform with unknown and geographically dispersed collaborators through its analysis of three case studies that feature musicians improvising in the telematic music system eJamming. The analysis employs a social semiotic analytical framework combining multimodal discourse analysis (MDA), and ideas from the related field of cognitive linguistics (CL). This multimodal approach employs MDA to analyse music, sound, gesture and transcripts of networked musicians’ reflective experiences of tele-improvised musical interaction. These transcripts are examined through an interpretive framework of conceptual metaphor theory that enables an understanding of the ways in which musicians perceive and structure their interaction. The innovation of the proposed framework provides a pedagogical model for musicians and researchers to learn about cross-cultural musicians’ interaction in the rapidly growing field of Networked Music Performance (NMP). The main contributions of this thesis are: • A framework for the analysis of interaction in intercultural tele-improvisation; • An evaluation of cross-cultural musicians’ approaches and strategies to tele-improvisation; and • A theory of intercultural interaction in tele-improvisation

Dynamic Cues for Network Music Interactions

This paper provides an overview of a cueing system, the Master Cue Generator (MCG) used to trigger performers (humans or computers) over an IP-based network. The performers are scattered in several locations and receive cues to help them interact musically over the net- work. The paper proposes a classification of cues that dynamically evolve and reshape as the performance takes place. This begets the explo- ration of various issues such as how to represent and port a hierarchy of control over a net- worked music performance (NMP) and also takes into account parameters inherent to a net- work such as latency and distance. This ap- proach is based on several years of practice-led research in the field of NMP, a discipline that is gaining grounds within the music technology community both as a practice and through the development of tools and strategies for interact- ing over disparate locations