7 research outputs found
Automatically calculating tonal tension
Since the early years of the past century, many scholars have focused their efforts towards designing models to better understand the way listeners perceive musical tension. From the existing models, Lerdahl’s has shown strong correlations against tension judgements provided by human listeners and has been used to make accurate predictions of musical tension. However, a full automation of Lerdahl’s model of tension has not yet been made available. This paper presents a computational approach to automatically calculate musical tension according to Lerdahl’s model, with a publicly available implementation
Harmonic analysis of music using combinatory categorial grammar
FP7 grant 249520 (GRAMPLUS)Various patterns of the organization of Western tonal music exhibit hierarchical structure,
among them the harmonic progressions underlying melodies and the metre underlying
rhythmic patterns. Recognizing these structures is an important part of unconscious
human cognitive processing of music. Since the prosody and syntax of natural
languages are commonly analysed with similar hierarchical structures, it is reasonable
to expect that the techniques used to identify these structures automatically in natural
language might also be applied to the automatic interpretation of music.
In natural language processing (NLP), analysing the syntactic structure of a sentence
is prerequisite to semantic interpretation. The analysis is made difficult by the
high degree of ambiguity in even moderately long sentences. In music, a similar sort of
structural analysis, with a similar degree of ambiguity, is fundamental to tasks such as
key identification and score transcription. These and other tasks depend on harmonic
and rhythmic analyses. There is a long history of applying linguistic analysis techniques
to musical analysis. In recent years, statistical modelling, in particular in the
form of probabilistic models, has become ubiquitous in NLP for large-scale practical
analysis of language. The focus of the present work is the application of statistical
parsing to automatic harmonic analysis of music.
This thesis demonstrates that statistical parsing techniques, adapted from NLP with
little modification, can be successfully applied to recovering the harmonic structure
underlying music. It shows first how a type of formal grammar based on one used
for linguistic syntactic processing, Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG), can be
used to analyse the hierarchical structure of chord sequences. I introduce a formal
language similar to first-order predicate logical to express the hierarchical tonal harmonic
relationships between chords. The syntactic grammar formalism then serves as
a mechanism to map an unstructured chord sequence onto its structured analysis.
In NLP, the high degree of ambiguity of the analysis means that a parser must
consider a huge number of possible structures. Chart parsing provides an efficient
mechanism to explore them. Statistical models allow the parser to use information
about structures seen before in a training corpus to eliminate improbable interpretations
early on in the process and to rank the final analyses by plausibility. To apply the
same techniques to harmonic analysis of chord sequences, a corpus of tonal jazz chord
sequences annotated by hand with harmonic analyses is constructed. Two statistical
parsing techniques are adapted to the present task and evaluated on their success at recovering the annotated structures. The experiments show that parsing using a statistical
model of syntactic derivations is more successful than a Markovian baseline
model at recovering harmonic structure. In addition, the practical technique of statistical
supertagging serves to speed up parsing without any loss in accuracy.
This approach to recovering harmonic structure can be extended to the analysis of
performance data symbolically represented as notes. Experiments using some simple
proof-of-concept extensions of the above parsing models demonstrate one probabilistic
approach to this. The results reported provide a baseline for future work on the task of
harmonic analysis of performances
Tension-driven Automatic Music Generation
The Ancient Greeks are one of the first civilisations we know of to have created algorithms to compose music. Since then, algorithmic techniques have vastly improved with increasingly sophisticated computers. In the last two decades, much research in this area has focused on two goals: designing algorithms which generate music as close as possible to that of human composers and implementing those algorithms to automatically generate music in interactive scenarios, such as video games.
To meet these goals, automatically generated music should:
- focus on higher-level concepts, such as musical tension,
- have long-term structure, and
- be able to adapt to changes in real time.
Combining these three requirements is, however, a challenging task. This dissertation investigates three steps to overcome this challenge. First, we argue that Lerdahl’s model of musical tension is suited to the automatic generation of tonal music that has long-term structure and that matches a given tension profile. By means of an illustrative example, we review Lerdhal’s model and implement a novel computational system to automate it. Second, we show that an effective generation strategy is to combine statistical methods with both rule-based methods and generative grammars to create a music generation system. Third, we implement the system and evaluate it through a collection of computational tests and empirical studies.
Our evaluation shows that:
(1) the system works effectively in real time, as long as the input tension profiles do not contain too many steep transitions,
(2) the hierarchical structure perceived by listeners matches the patterns intended by the system in the generated music, and
(3) tension-changing input profiles are accurately matched by the generated music
Human-centred design of clinical auditory alarms
Auditory alarms are commonly badly designed, providing little to no information or
guidance. In the healthcare context, the poor acoustics of alarms is one contributor for the
noise problem. The goal of this thesis is to propose a human-centred methodology for the
design of clinical auditory alarms, by making them less disruptive and more informative,
thus improving the healthcare soundscape. It implements this methodology from concept
to evaluation and validation, combining psychoacoustics with usability and user
experience methods. Another aim of this research consisted in understanding the
limitations and possibilities offered by online tools for scientific studies. Thus, different
processes and methodologies were implemented, and corresponding results were
discussed.
To understand the acoustic healthcare environment, field visits, interviews, and surveys
were performed with healthcare professionals. Additionally, sound pressure levels and
frequency analysis of several surgeries in different hospitals provided specific sound design
requirements, which were added to an existent body of knowledge on clinical alarm
design. A second stage consisted in prototyping very simple sounds to comprehend which
temporal and spectral parameters of sound could be manipulated to communicate clinical
information. Parameters such as frequency, speed, onset, and rhythm were studied, and
relations between subjective perception and physical parameters were established. In
parallel, and heavily influenced by the new IEC 60601-1-8 - General requirements, tests and
guidance for alarm systems in medical electrical equipment and medical electrical systems,
a design strategy with auditory icons was created. This strategy intended to provide as
much information as possible in an auditory alarm. To do so, it involved two main
components: a priority pointer indicating the priority of the alarm; an auditory icon
indicating the cause of the alarm. A third component indicating increasing or decreasing
tendency of the vital sign was designed, but not validated with users. After online
validation of the priority pointer and auditory icon for eight categories (cardiac, drug
administration, ventilation, blood pressure, perfusion, oxygen, temperature, and power
down), a new library of clinical auditory alarms is proposed.Os alarmes auditivos são habitualmente mal concebidos, dando poucas informações ou
orientações perante a situação que despoletou o aviso. No contexto da saúde, a má acústica
dos alarmes Ă© um dos contribuidores para o problema do ruĂdo. O objetivo desta tese Ă© o
de melhorar a paisagem sonora em ambientes clĂnicos, propondo uma metodologia
centrada no Humano para o design de alarmes auditivos clĂnicos, tornando-os menos
disruptivos e mais informativos. Essa metodologia é implementada desde o conceito até a
avaliação e validação, combinando métodos da psicoacústica com métodos de usabilidade
e experiência do utilizador. Outro objetivo desta investigação é o de compreender as
limitações e possibilidades oferecidas pelas ferramentas online para estudos cientĂficos.
Assim, diversos processos e metodologias foram implementados, e os respetivos resultados
sĂŁo discutidos.
Para compreender o ambiente acĂşstico clĂnico, foram realizadas visitas de campo,
entrevistas e inquĂ©ritos com profissionais de saĂşde. AlĂ©m disso, avaliou-se o nĂvel de
pressão sonora e frequências de várias cirurgias em diferentes hospitais. Esta atividade
forneceu requisitos especĂficos de design de som que foram adicionados a um corpo
existente de conhecimento sobre design de alarmes clĂnicos. Uma segunda etapa consistiu
na prototipagem de sons simples para compreender que parâmetros temporais e espectrais
do som poderiam ser manipulados para comunicar informações clĂnicas. Parâmetros como
frequência, velocidade, envelope e ritmo foram estudados, e as relações entre a perceção
subjetiva e os parâmetros fĂsicos foram estabelecidas. Paralelamente, e fortemente
influenciado pela nova norma IEC 60601-1-8 - Requisitos gerais, testes e orientações para
sistemas de alarme em equipamentos médicos elétricos e sistemas médicos elétricos, foi
criada uma estratĂ©gia de design com Ăcones auditivos. Essa estratĂ©gia pretendia incorporar
o máximo de informações num alarme auditivo. Para isso, envolveu dois componentes
principais: um ponteiro de prioridade que indica a prioridade do alarme; e um Ăcone
auditivo que indica a causa do alarme. Um terceiro componente de tendĂŞncia (aumento
ou diminuição do valor do sinal vital) foi criado, mas não validado com utilizadores. Após
a validação do ponteiro de prioridade e Ăcone auditivo para oito categorias (cardĂaco,
administração de medicamentos, ventilação, pressão arterial, perfusão, oxigénio,
temperatura e falha de equipamento), propõe-se uma nova biblioteca de alarmes auditivos
clĂnicos
Smoking and Second Hand Smoking in Adolescents with Chronic Kidney Disease: A Report from the Chronic Kidney Disease in Children (CKiD) Cohort Study
The goal of this study was to determine the prevalence of smoking and second hand smoking [SHS] in adolescents with CKD and their relationship to baseline parameters at enrollment in the CKiD, observational cohort study of 600 children (aged 1-16 yrs) with Schwartz estimated GFR of 30-90 ml/min/1.73m2. 239 adolescents had self-report survey data on smoking and SHS exposure: 21 [9%] subjects had “ever” smoked a cigarette. Among them, 4 were current and 17 were former smokers. Hypertension was more prevalent in those that had “ever” smoked a cigarette (42%) compared to non-smokers (9%), p\u3c0.01. Among 218 non-smokers, 130 (59%) were male, 142 (65%) were Caucasian; 60 (28%) reported SHS exposure compared to 158 (72%) with no exposure. Non-smoker adolescents with SHS exposure were compared to those without SHS exposure. There was no racial, age, or gender differences between both groups. Baseline creatinine, diastolic hypertension, C reactive protein, lipid profile, GFR and hemoglobin were not statistically different. Significantly higher protein to creatinine ratio (0.90 vs. 0.53, p\u3c0.01) was observed in those exposed to SHS compared to those not exposed. Exposed adolescents were heavier than non-exposed adolescents (85th percentile vs. 55th percentile for BMI, p\u3c 0.01). Uncontrolled casual systolic hypertension was twice as prevalent among those exposed to SHS (16%) compared to those not exposed to SHS (7%), though the difference was not statistically significant (p= 0.07). Adjusted multivariate regression analysis [OR (95% CI)] showed that increased protein to creatinine ratio [1.34 (1.03, 1.75)] and higher BMI [1.14 (1.02, 1.29)] were independently associated with exposure to SHS among non-smoker adolescents. These results reveal that among adolescents with CKD, cigarette use is low and SHS is highly prevalent. The association of smoking with hypertension and SHS with increased proteinuria suggests a possible role of these factors in CKD progression and cardiovascular outcomes