Information dynamics: patterns of expectation and surprise in the perception of music

This is a postprint of an article submitted for consideration in Connection Science © 2009 [copyright Taylor & Francis]; Connection Science is available online at:http://www.tandfonline.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0954-0091&volume=21&issue=2-3&spage=8

Algorithmic music composition: a survey

This paper surveys some of the methods used for algorithmic composition and their evolution during the last decades. Algorithmic composition was motivated by the natural need to assist and to develop the process of music creation. Techniques and applications of algorithmic composition are broad spectrum, ranging from methods that produce entire works with no human intervention, up to methods were both composer and computer work closely together in real-time. Common algorithms used for music composition are based in stochastic, deterministic, chaotic and artificial intelligence methods.N/

From holism to compositionality: memes and the evolution of segmentation, syntax, and signification in music and language

Steven Mithen argues that language evolved from an antecedent he terms “Hmmmmm, [meaning it was] Holistic, manipulative, multi-modal, musical and mimetic”. Owing to certain innate and learned factors, a capacity for segmentation and cross-stream mapping in early Homo sapiens broke the continuous line of Hmmmmm, creating discrete replicated units which, with the initial support of Hmmmmm, eventually became the semantically freighted words of modern language. That which remained after what was a bifurcation of Hmmmmm arguably survived as music, existing as a sound stream segmented into discrete units, although one without the explicit and relatively fixed semantic content of language. All three types of utterance – the parent Hmmmmm, language, and music – are amenable to a memetic interpretation which applies Universal Darwinism to what are understood as language and musical memes. On the basis of Peter Carruthers’ distinction between ‘cognitivism’ and ‘communicativism’ in language, and William Calvin’s theories of cortical information encoding, a framework is hypothesized for the semantic and syntactic associations between, on the one hand, the sonic patterns of language memes (‘lexemes’) and of musical memes (‘musemes’) and, on the other hand, ‘mentalese’ conceptual structures, in Chomsky’s ‘Logical Form’ (LF)

Automated manipulation of musical grammars to support episodic interactive experiences

Music is used to enhance the experience of participants and visitors in a range of settings including theatre, film, video games, installations and theme parks. These experiences may be interactive, contrastingly episodic and with variable duration. Hence, the musical accompaniment needs to be dynamic and to transition between contrasting music passages. In these contexts, computer generation of music may be necessary for practical reasons including distribution and cost. Automated and dynamic composition algorithms exist but are not well-suited to a highly interactive episodic context owing to transition-related problems including discontinuity, abruptness, extended repetitiveness and lack of musical granularity and musical form. Addressing these problems requires algorithms capable of reacting to participant behaviour and episodic change in order to generate formic music that is continuous and coherent during transitions. This thesis presents the Form-Aware Transitioning and Recovering Algorithm (FATRA) for realtime, adaptive, form-aware music generation to provide continuous musical accompaniment in episodic context. FATRA combines stochastic grammar adaptation and grammar merging in real time. The Form-Aware Transition Engine (FATE) implementation of FATRA estimates the time-occurrence of upcoming narrative transitions and generates a harmonic sequence as narrative accompaniment with a focus on coherent, form-aware music transitioning between music passages of contrasting character. Using FATE, FATRA has been evaluated in three perceptual user studies: An audioaugmented real museum experience, a computer-simulated museum experience and a music-focused online study detached from narrative. Music transitions of FATRA were benchmarked against common approaches of the video game industry, i.e. crossfading and direct transitions. The participants were overall content with the music of FATE during their experience. Transitions of FATE were significantly favoured against the crossfading benchmark and competitive against the direct transitions benchmark, without statistical significance for the latter comparison. In addition, technical evaluation demonstrated capabilities of FATRA including form generation, repetitiveness avoidance and style/form recovery in case of falsely predicted narrative transitions. Technical results along with perceptual preference and competitiveness against the benchmark approaches are deemed as positive and the structural advantages of FATRA, including form-aware transitioning, carry considerable potential for future research

Sherwood Music School Annual Catalog 1968-1969

The 1968-1969 Annual Academic Catalog for Sherwood Music School, featuring information about the School, images of student and campus life, department descriptions, biographical information about and images of faculty, course and program descriptions, information about student services, and tuition information.https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/sherwood_cat/1037/thumbnail.jp

Schaeffer's Solfège, Percussion, Audio Descriptors: Towards an Interactive Musical System

Pierre Schaeffer's typomorphology (1966) proposes seven criteria of musical perception for the identification and qualification of sound objects, which form the basis of his musical theory. This Solfège fits well into contexts where pitch is not the dominant dimension. Relying on similarities between the practice of reduced listening and the utilization of low-level audio descriptors, we present the first version of a real-time setup in which these descriptors are applied to qualify percussive sounds. The paper describes the tools and strategies used for addressing different criteria: envelope followers with different window sizes and filtering; detection of transients and amplitude modulations; extraction and counting of spectral components; estimation of intrinsic dissonance and spectral distribution; among others. The extracted data is subjected to simple statistical analysis, producing scalar values associated with each segmented object. Finally, we present a variety of examples

Harmony in Time: Memory, Consciousness, and Expectation in Beethoven\u27s Waldstein Sonata, Op. 53

Harmonic expectations in Western tonal music are formed throughout an individual\u27s lifetime, created by the encounter of commonly recurring patterns of relationships of chords within music. The recognition and identification of these patterns, particularly when the anticipated patterns are denied, are expressed on a conscious level. Although identified and articulated from the conscious experience, a listener\u27s attention may not be actively engaged in harmonic processing; moreover, the identification of deviations may arise from nonconscious processing of harmonic events. This paper identifies the processes in formulating and expressing harmonic expectation and its subsequent denial, as well as the nonconscious processing which influences this recognition. Additionally, this paper theorizes that expectations on a larger scale, beyond the chordal level, may be generated and fulfilled nonconsciously. This paper concludes with an analysis of Beethoven\u27s Waldstein Sonata, identifying moments of conflict between small-scale denials of expectations within the fulfillment of large-scale processes

Sherwood Music School Annual Catalog 1966-1967

The 1966-1967 Annual Academic Catalog for Sherwood Music School, featuring information about the School, images of student and campus life, department descriptions, biographical information about and images of faculty, course and program descriptions, information about student services, and tuition information.https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/sherwood_cat/1035/thumbnail.jp