Building music with lego bricks and Raspberry Pi

In this paper, a system to build music in an intuitive and accessible way, with Lego bricks, is presented. The system makes use of the new powerful and cheap possibilities that technology ofers for making old things in a new way. The Raspberry Pi is used to control the system and run the necessary algorithms, customized Lego bricks are used for building melodies, custom electronic designs, software pieces and 3D printed parts complete the items employed. The system designed is modular, it allows creating melodies with chords and percussion or just melodies or perform as a beatbox or a melody box. The main interaction with the system is made using Lego-type building blocks. Tests have demonstrated its versatility and ease of use, as well as its usefulness in music learning for both children and adults.Funding for open access publishing: Universidad Málaga/CBUA This publication is part of the project PDC2021-120997-C33 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, and European Union “NextGenerationEU/PRTR”. This publication is part of the project PID2021-123207NB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE. This work was done at Universidad de Málaga, Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucia Tech. Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga/CBUA

Censo español de investigación de la I+D+i y Ciencia en videojuegos 2020

Esta es una obra en colaboración, donde los autores de cada capítulo han utilizado imágenes propias del grupo (fotografías o posters) o imágenes de bancos de imágenes sin copyright. Además los autores han firmado un acuerdo de cesión de derechos de forma gratuita a la Universidad de Málaga para su publicación en abierto.Este volumen contiene información sobre los grupos de investigación y los investigadores que trabajan sobre algún aspecto relacionado con los videojuegos

Exploring the Features to Classify the Musical Period of Western Classical Music

Music Information Retrieval (MIR) focuses on extracting meaningful information from music content. MIR is a growing field of research with many applications such as music recommendation systems, fingerprinting, query-by-humming or music genre classification. This study aims to classify the styles of Western classical music, as this has not been explored to a great extent by MIR. In particular, this research will evaluate the impact of different music characteristics on identifying the musical period of Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern. In order to easily extract features related to music theory, symbolic representation or music scores were used, instead of audio format. A collection of 870 Western classical music piano scores was downloaded from different sources such as KernScore library (humdrum format) or the Musescore community (MusicXML format). Several global features were constructed by parsing the files and accessing the symbolic information, including notes and duration. These features include melodic intervals, chord types, pitch and rhythm histograms and were based on previous studies and music theory research. Using a radial kernel support vector machine algorithm, different classification models were created to analyse the contribution of the main musical properties: rhythm, pitch, harmony and melody. The study findings revealed that the harmony features were significant predictors of the music styles. The research also confirmed that the musical styles evolved gradually and that the changes in the tonal system through the years, appeared to be the most significant change to identify the styles. This is consistent with the findings of other researchers. The overall accuracy of the model using all the available features achieved an accuracy of 84.3%. It was found that of the four periods studied, it was most difficult to classify music from the Modern period

L-Music: uma abordagem para composição musical assistida usando L-Systems

Generative music systems have been researched for an extended period of time. The scientific corpus of this research field is translating, currently, into the world of the everyday musician and composer. With these tools, the creative process of writing music can be augmented or completely replaced by machines. The work in this document aims to contribute to research in assisted music composition systems. To do so, a review on the state of the art of these fields was performed and we found that a plethora of methodologies and approaches each provide their own interesting results (to name a few, neural networks, statistical models, and formal grammars). We identified Lindenmayer Systems, or L-Systems, as the most interesting and least explored approach to develop an assisted music composition system prototype, aptly named L-Music, due to the ability of producing complex outputs from simple structures. L-Systems were initially proposed as a parallel string rewriting grammar to model algae plant growth. Their applications soon turned graphical (e.g., drawing fractals), and eventually they were applied to music generation. Given that our prototype is assistive, we also took the user interface and user experience design into its well-deserved consideration. Our implemented interface is straightforward, simple to use with a structured visual hierarchy and flow and enables musicians and composers to select their desired instruments; select L-Systems for generating music or create their own custom ones and edit musical parameters (e.g., scale and octave range) to further control the outcome of L-Music, which is musical fragments that a musician or composer can then use in their own works. Three musical interpretations on L-Systems were implemented: a random interpretation, a scale-based interpretation, and a polyphonic interpretation. All three approaches produced interesting musical ideas, which we found to be potentially usable by musicians and composers in their own creative works. Although positive results were obtained, the developed prototype has many improvements for future work. Further musical interpretations can be added, as well as increasing the number of possible musical parameters that a user can edit. We also identified the possibility of giving the user control over what musical meaning L-Systems have as an interesting future challenge.Sistemas de geração de música têm sido alvo de investigação durante períodos alargados de tempo. Recentemente, tem havido esforços em passar o conhecimento adquirido de sistemas de geração de música autónomos e assistidos para as mãos do músico e compositor. Com estas ferramentas, o processo criativo pode ser enaltecido ou completamente substituído por máquinas. O presente trabalho visa contribuir para a investigação de sistemas de composição musical assistida. Para tal, foi efetuado um estudo do estado da arte destas temáticas, sendo que foram encontradas diversas metodologias que ofereciam resultados interessantes de um ponto de vista técnico e musical. Os sistemas de Lindenmayer, ou L-Systems, foram selecionados como a abordagem mais interessante, e menos explorada, para desenvolver um protótipo de um sistema de composição musical assistido com o nome L-Music, devido à sua capacidade de produzirem resultados complexos a partir de estruturas simples. Os L-Systems, inicialmente propostos para modelar o crescimento de plantas de algas, são gramáticas formais, cujo processo de reescrita de strings acontece de forma paralela. As suas aplicações rapidamente evoluíram para interpretações gráficas (p.e., desenhar fractais), e eventualmente também foram aplicados à geração de música. Dada a natureza assistida do protótipo desenvolvido, houve uma especial atenção dada ao design da interface e experiência do utilizador. Esta, é concisa e simples, tendo uma hierarquia visual estruturada para oferecer uma orientação coesa ao utilizador. Neste protótipo, os utilizadores podem selecionar instrumentos; selecionar L-Systems ou criar os seus próprios, e editar parâmetros musicais (p.e., escala e intervalo de oitavas) de forma a gerarem excertos musicais que possam usar nas suas próprias composições. Foram implementadas três interpretações musicais de L-Systems: uma interpretação aleatória, uma interpretação à base de escalas e uma interpretação polifónica. Todas as interpretações produziram resultados musicais interessantes, e provaram ter potencial para serem utilizadas por músicos e compositores nos seus trabalhos criativos. Embora tenham sido alcançados resultados positivos, o protótipo desenvolvido apresenta múltiplas melhorias para trabalho futuro. Entre elas estão, por exemplo, a adição de mais interpretações musicais e a adição de mais parâmetros musicais editáveis pelo utilizador. A possibilidade de um utilizador controlar o significado musical de um L-System também foi identificada como uma proposta futura relevante