1,269 research outputs found

    Computers in Support of Musical Expression

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    Modern piano teaching technologies

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    The article deals with certain approaches and methods using the latest technology to improve the results of piano teaching. Back in the nineteenth century, some teachers tried to develop special mechanical devices for their students. However, their efforts mostly failed or reduced piano playing to simple mechanical algorithms of the performer without improvising. Currently, two approaches for introducing modern technologies have become apparent in piano teaching: making group lessons more interactive and increasing the scope of individual learning along with gradual withdrawal of the teacher. In recent years, the second method has been applied more often due to the increasing technological autonomy of each person through the use of the Internet and the revolutionary advancements in the field of augmented reality tools. However, a number of new technical solutions are far from being ready for use by educational institutions and individuals; therefore, it currently seems relevant to combine modern technology with conventional music teaching practices

    Elucidating musical structure through empirical measurement of performance parameters

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    The differences between a musical score and an instance of that music in a performance, communicates a performer’s view of the information contained in that score. The main hypothesis in this thesis is that by measuring quantifiable parameters such as tempo, dynamics and motion from live performance, the performer’s interpretation of musical structure can be detected. This will be tested for pieces for which the structure is explicit and obvious, and then used to discover musical structure from looking at patterns of aural and visual performance parameters in performances of more ambiguously structured pieces. This thesis is in two strands. The first part covers the acquisition of multi-modal parameters in piano performance. This will explore current technologies in acquiring MIDI information such as accurate onset timings and key velocities as well as motion tracking systems for measuring general body movements. A new cheap, portable and accurate system for tracking the intricacies of pianists’ finger movement is described as well as methods and tools available for analysis and visualisation of musical data. The second strand of this thesis will explore uses of these capture systems in empirically measuring performance parameters to elucidate musical structure. Two experiments follow which test the hypothesis of detecting musical structure from parameters such as tempo, dynamics and movement, before using these patterns as a basis for discovering structure in performances of the finale of Chopin’s B flat minor sonata. Body movement is discovered as an indicator of phrasing boundaries, which when combined with the measured aural parameters provides interpretations of the performed music. Phrasing boundaries are identified correctly for the control piece (Chopin’s Prelude in A major Op.28, No.7) and consequently for the first test piece (Chopin’s Prelude in B minor Op.28 No.6). The proceeding experiment identifies performers’ style of phrase endings through performances of the control piece and tests them against patterns found in the second test piece (Chopin’s B Flat minor Sonata Finale). Five out of the six performers confirm the musicological hypothesis that bar 5 is not the entry of a new theme but the continuation of the the theme beginning in bar 1

    MIDI-based music score editor

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    [Abstract] Music has always played a fundamental role in society. It is a basic human function and, as a consequence people have always found music significant whether it is for enjoyment in listening, its emotional response, performing or creating. Music is represented using music notation. Music notation is the transcription of music into music scores. Music scores have been a way of teaching and sharing music with others. In addition, it was a key contributor to evolving music language and allowing the works of composers to be preserved over time. The continuous advancements in technology have influenced both the creation and recording of music. One of the milestones for music creation and recording was Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI). MIDI is a protocol that provides a standardized and efficient means of conveying musical performance information as electronic data. Then, it is possible to obtain musical notation information by just processing the electronic data inside a MIDI file. The objective of this project is to develop and implement a MIDI based music score creator. Users will be able to load MIDI files, process them and generate the correspondent music score. To achieve this, a combination of musical knowledge and information obtained by the MIDI protocol will be used to create the accurate scores.[Resumo] A música sempre xogou un papel fundamental na sociedade. A música é unha función básica nos humanos e polo tanto, as música sempre foi importante para as persoas, xa fora para disfrutar escoitándoa, pola resposta emocional, para interpretala ou para creala. A música é representada pola notación musical. A notación musical consiste na transcipción de música en partituras. As partituras músicales sempre foron unha forma de enseñar e compartir música entre as persoas. Ademais, as partituras foron un contribuinte clave na evolución da linguaxe musical e permitiron preservar as obras creadas por diferentes compositores a través do tempo. Os avances continuos en tecnoloxía influenciaron tanto a creación como a grabación da música. Un dos hitos máis importantes para a creación e grabación de musica foi a creación de MIDI. O protocolo MIDI proporciona un medio estandarizado e eficiente para transmitir información musical como datos electrónicos. Polo tanto, é posible obtener información sobre notación musical simplemente procesando os datos electrónicos dentro dun archivo MIDI. O obxectivo deste proxecto e desarrollar e implementar un creador de partituras musicales baseado en MIDI. Os usuarios poderán cargar archivos MIDI, procesales e xerar a partitura correspondiente. Para logralo, utilizarase unha combination de conocimientos musicales e de información obtida polo protocolo MIDI para crear partituras precisas.Traballo fin de grao (UDC.FIC). Enxeñaría informática. Curso 2019/202

    Foley Music: Learning to Generate Music from Videos

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    In this paper, we introduce Foley Music, a system that can synthesize plausible music for a silent video clip about people playing musical instruments. We first identify two key intermediate representations for a successful video to music generator: body keypoints from videos and MIDI events from audio recordings. We then formulate music generation from videos as a motion-to-MIDI translation problem. We present a Graph-Transformer framework that can accurately predict MIDI event sequences in accordance with the body movements. The MIDI event can then be converted to realistic music using an off-the-shelf music synthesizer tool. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our models on videos containing a variety of music performances. Experimental results show that our model outperforms several existing systems in generating music that is pleasant to listen to. More importantly, the MIDI representations are fully interpretable and transparent, thus enabling us to perform music editing flexibly. We encourage the readers to watch the demo video with audio turned on to experience the results.Comment: ECCV 2020. Project page: http://foley-music.csail.mit.ed

    A new approach to onset detection: towards an empirical grounding of theoretical and speculative ideologies of musical performance

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    This article assesses aspects of the current state of a project which aims, with the help of computers and computer software, to segment soundfiles of vocal melodies into their component notes, identifying precisely when the onset of each note occurs, and then tracking the pitch trajectory of each note, especially in melodies employing a variety of non-standard temperaments, in which musical intervals smaller than 100 cents are ubiquitous. From there, we may proceed further, to describe many other “micro-features” of each of the notes, but for now our focus is on the onset times and pitch trajectories
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