Creative professional users musical relevance criteria

Although known item searching for music can be dealt with by searching metadata using existing text search techniques, human subjectivity and variability within the music itself make it very difficult to search for unknown items. This paper examines these problems within the context of text retrieval and music information retrieval. The focus is on ascertaining a relationship between music relevance criteria and those relating to relevance judgements in text retrieval. A data-rich collection of relevance judgements by creative professionals searching for unknown musical items to accompany moving images using real world queries is analysed. The participants in our observations are found to take a socio-cognitive approach and use a range of content and context based criteria. These criteria correlate strongly with those arising from previous text retrieval studies despite the many differences between music and text in their actual content

Upbeat and quirky with a bit of a build: Interpretive repertories in creative music search

Pre-existing commercial music is widely used to accom-pany moving images in films, TV commercials and com-puter games. This process is known as music synchronisa-tion. Professionals are employed by rights holders and film makers to perform creative music searches on large catalogues to find appropriate pieces of music for syn-chronisation. This paper discusses a Discourse Analysis of thirty interview texts related to the process. Coded ex-amples are presented and discussed. Four interpretive repertoires are identified: the Musical Repertoire, the Soundtrack Repertoire, the Business Repertoire and the Cultural Repertoire. These ways of talking about music are adopted by all of the community regardless of their interest as Music Owner or Music User. Music is shown to have multi-variate and sometimes conflicting meanings within this community which are dynamic and negotiated. This is related to a theoretical feedback model of communication and meaning making which proposes that Owners and Users employ their own and shared ways of talking and thinking about music and its context to determine musical meaning. The value to the music information retrieval community is to inform system design from a user information needs perspective

Towards the disintermediation of creative music search: Analysing queries to determine important facets

Purpose: Creative professionals search for music to accompany moving images in films, advertising, television. Some larger music rights holders (record companies and music publishers) organise their catalogues to allow online searching. These digital libraries are organised by various subjective musical facets as well as by artist and title metadata. The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of written queries relating to creative music search, contextualised and discussed within the findings of text analyses of a larger research project whose aim is to investigate meaning making in this search process. Method: A facet analysis of a collection of written music queries is discussed in relation to the organisation of the music in a selection of bespoke search engines. Results: Subjective facets, in particular Mood, are found to be highly important in query formation. Unusually, detailed Music Structural aspects are also key. Conclusions: These findings are discussed in relation to disintermediation of this process. It is suggested that there are barriers to this, both in terms of classification and also commercial / legal factors

Upbeat and quirky, with a bit of a build: Interpretive repertoires in creative music search

Pre-existing commercial music is widely used to accompany moving images in films, TV commercials and computer games. This process is known as music synchronisation. Professionals are employed by rights holders and film makers to perform creative music searches on large catalogues to find appropriate pieces of music for synchronisation. This paper discusses a Discourse Analysis of thirty interview texts related to the process. Coded examples are presented and discussed. Four interpretive repertoires are identified: the Musical Repertoire, the Soundtrack Repertoire, the Business Repertoire and the Cultural Repertoire. These ways of talking about music are adopted by all of the community regardless of their interest as Music Owner or Music User. Music is shown to have multi-variate and sometimes conflicting meanings within this community which are dynamic and negotiated. This is related to a theoretical feedback model of communication and meaning making which proposes that Owners and Users employ their own and shared ways of talking and thinking about music and its context to determine musical meaning. The value to the music information retrieval community is to inform system design from a user information needs perspective

Music information seeking behaviour as motivator for musical creativity: conceptual analysis and literature review.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the connection between musicians' information seeking behaviour and the creative process in music, providing a framework for understanding the role of information needs satisfaction in musical creativity. A number of studies in information science literature have been carried out attempting to model cognitive, affective, behavioural and contextual factors associated with music information seeking behaviour. However, only few studies have addressed the relationship between information seeking behaviour and musical creative activities such as composition, performance and improvisation, listening and analysis. Design/methodology/approach - The focus of this paper is to provide a framework for the study of information seeking behaviour for the purposes of satisfying musical creativity information needs, combining the theoretical basis of an established model of information behaviour developed by Wilson and the theoretical perspectives of a music creative thinking model proposed by Webster. The key features of the two models are synthesized in a unified model of information seeking behaviour for musical creativity and enriched with research findings identified in the literature of both musical information seeking and musical creativity. Findings - The proposed conceptual framework offers an integrated interpretation of the combinations of information needs, information resources and environmental/personal barriers, which enable musical creativity. In the authors' approach 'musical creativity' is treated as a musician's aim or ambition or drive for expression and is influenced by the way musicians seek information for that purpose. Therefore, musical creativity is an intentional behaviour which acts as motivator for information seeking and is affected by the available information and the musician's information seeking profile. The current study include three important findings: first, the design and development of music library and information services for musical creativity; second, the development of music information literacy skills for creativity; and third, the information seeking behavioural perspective for universal musical creativity, and the implications for cultural musical heritage diffusion around the world. Originality/value - An integrated information seeking behaviour model which includes musical creativity is developed through the synthesis of two already existing approaches, that of Wilson for information seeking behaviour and that of Webster for creative thinking in music. The present conceptual study presents a three stage pattern or process for modelling information seeking for musical creativity: the process initiates with the intention-motivation for creativity, then proceeds to information seeking behaviour and then concludes with the musical creativity outcomes. This is the first study that seeks to understand the relationships between creativity and information seeking behaviour

Upbeat and Quirky, With a Bit of a Build: Communicating Meaning and Meeting Information Needs in the Music Industry

Music is widely used to accompany moving images, in films, advertising, television programmes and computer games. The process of choosing and using a piece of pre-existing commercial music for this purpose is known as synchronisation. The addition of music to a piece of film enhances the final work with cultural meaning, and generates additional income for the rights holders. This research examines the information needs of professionals involved in the selection of music, including Users from the advertising and film communities and Owners from the recording and publishing industries. A tentative communications model is developed and proposed from musicological, semiotic and communications literature. Interviews, knowledge organisation systems, queries and observations are identified as rich potential sources of textual data relating to the communications process around satisfying the Users’ information needs. The content of these texts is analysed to identify key musical facets. Mood is found to be an important factor when searching for unknown musical items. Using a Discourse Analytic approach to the interview texts, four discourses, or interpretive repertoires, are identified. These repertoires carry conflicting meanings of music and are employed throughout the community, although relative emphases vary according to the viewpoint of the stakeholder. This is supported by an analysis of the written texts of both the Owners (music search engines) and the Users (written queries, or briefs). A comparison is drawn between the emphasis of the repertoires and the precision of the search engines. The repertoires are applied to the theoretical communications model, which is revised to reflect the findings of the analyses. This is used to make recommendations on how to improve the disintermediated communications process, by emphasising the repertoires employed by the Users rather than those of the Owners

Music information modes and their situational relevance among musicians and music students

Musiikkiin liittyvä tietämys ei ole vain sanallista. Muusikon kehonkieltä, musiikin synnyttämää kuulokuvaa, nuotteja ja kirjoituksia musiikista voidaan kaikkia käyttää musiikillisen informaation lähteinä. Koska musiikkiin liittyvät merkkijärjestelmät eivät käänny ongelmattomasti toisiinsa, niillä voi olla erilaisia moodikohtaisia rooleja ja tulkintoja musiikillisessa viestinnässä. Tätä musiikillisen informaation erityispiirrettä ei ole riittävästi huomioitu aikaisemmassa musiikkitiedon hankinnan tutkimuksessa. Vaikka aikaisempi tutkimus osoittaa musiikkiäänitteet ja nuotit muusikoiden ja musiikin opiskelijoiden keskeisiksi tiedontarpeiksi, kysymys siitä miksi eri kohderyhmät tarvitsevat näitä musiikki-informaation moodeja on jäänyt tarkastelematta. Musiikkitiedon hankintaan kohdistuvan tutkimuksen informaatiokäsitettä tulisikin täsmentää. Musiikki-informaation eri moodit tulisi nähdä omina kokonaisuuksina, joilla on moodikohtaisia rooleja ja tulkintoja tiedonhankinnassa. Tämä väitöstutkimus tarkastelee eri abstraktiotasoisten musiikki-informaation moodien tilannerelevanssia tiedonhankinnassa. Tutkimuksen ensimmäisessä vaiheessa kehitettiin musiikki-informaation typologia, joka määrittelee musiikkitiedon hankinnan empiirisen tarkastelun kannalta relevantit musiikkiinformaation moodit. Musiikki-informaatiotypologian toimivuutta testattiin tarkastelemalla miten määritellyt moodit ovat läsnä ammattisäveltäjän kuvauksessa omasta sävellysprosessistaan. Toisessa empiirisessä tutkimuksessa analysoitiin esittävän säveltaiteen tohtoriopiskelijoiden havaintoja musiikki-informaatiomoodien tilannerelevanssista. Kolmannessa empiirisessä tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin, miten esittävän säveltaiteen tohtoriopiskelijat ja musiikkikasvatuksen ja musiikin teorian ja sävellyksen maisteriopiskelijat artikuloivat musiikki-informaatiomoodien tilannerelevanssin tehtäväperustaisen tiedonhankinnan eri vaiheissa. Väitöstutkimuksen tulokset lisäävät ymmärrystämme eri informaatiomoodien rooleista musiikkitiedon hankinnassa ja osoittavat että musiikki-informaation eri abstraktiotasojen huomiointi mahdollistaa aikaisempaa tarkemmat kuvaukset erilaisten kohderyhmien musiikkitiedon hankinnastaWithin the domain of music, knowledge resides not merely in written language, but also in diverse modes of information. Sources of music information may include the gestural language of music making, audible experiences of music, music notation and writings about music. The literature of musicology and musical semiotics suggests that different modes of music information may have roles and interpretations of their own and that it should not be assumed that a direct translation between them exists. As prior studies of musicians’ and music students’ information seeking often draw from humanist studies in general, they have not paid due attention to the modes of music information. Although music recordings and notation have been identified as information need types in prior studies of musicians and music students, the question of why these needs occur has not been examined so far. Thus, there is a need to elaborate on approaches to music information used in studies of musicrelated information seeking. Different music information modes should be defined as information types in their own right and subject to varying roles and interpretations in information seeking. This dissertation research is pioneering in its examination of the situational relevance of music information modes representing music information at varying levels of abstraction. The research began with the development of a typology specifying the modes of music information relevant to the empirical analysis of music-related information seeking. The typology’s accuracy and sufficiency were first examined empirically in a qualitative study focusing on how its information modes were reflected in a verbal description of the compositional process. The second empirical study examined how the situational relevance of the information modes was articulated by Doctor of Music students focusing on music performance. Finally, the third empirical study examined how the information modes were viewed as situationally relevant at different stages of information-seeking processes among Doctor of Music students focusing on music performance and master’s students representing music education and music theory and analysis. The findings of this dissertation research deepen our understanding of the role of varying music information types in information seeking for musical tasks. They suggest that approaching music information through its many layers provides more accurate descriptions of music-related information-seeking processes

Necessidades de informação musical dos alunos e professores da Escola de Música de Brasília

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Ciência da Informação e Documentação, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Informação, 2012 .Esta pesquisa buscou investigar as necessidades de informação musical, com recorte no Distrito Federal, especificamente de professores e alunos da Escola de Música de Brasília. Para tanto, foi identificado o perfil desses usuários especializados, os fatores que geram as necessidades de informação musical e como esses indivíduos se comportam na busca por informações musicais. Foram aplicados questionários online e impressos na coleta de dados, baseados em modelo de Cruz (2008), e entrevista com professor de música. Os resultados mostraram que a maioria dos participantes buscava informação musical frequentemente, pediam auxílio a seus pares mais do que a seus familiares. Constatou-se também ser a partitura o principal tipo de informação musical. Além disso, a partitura foi considerada item no resultado de uma busca informacional. ______________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACTThis research intended to investigate the music information needs of teachers and students of Escola de Música de Brasília. Their profile were identified, the factors which got the music information needs and their music information seeking behavior. A online and press survey was conducted, and a interview with a music teacher. The results showed that the major of participants always searched for music information, asked for help with our peers more than our families, and the sheet of music was the major kind of music information, and also the sheet was one of item in a music information search result

Relevance Criteria when Searching and Evaluating Online Video for Informational Use

Relevance is a core concept in the field of Information Science and a common term in everyday vernacular that generally refers to the usefulness of information. However, relevance has not been sufficiently or consistently defined or explored in the information science literature. Relevance criteria are the factors that information users employ when determining whether information they encounter is relevant. Identifying relevance criteria is a crucial step to understanding relevance. Relevance criteria employed with newer information formats like online video are especially important to study. Online video is now widespread, and people are increasingly likely to rely on video for information. This study identifies relevance criteria employed during relevance assessments of online video through a explanatory sequential mixed-methods study of frequent online video users including students, faculty, librarians, and video professionals. Methods included an online survey and interviews