Analysing musical performance through functional data analysis: rhythmic structure in Schumann's Träumerei

Functional data analysis (FDA) is a relatively new branch of statistics devoted to describing and modelling data that are complete functions. Many relevant aspects of musical performance and perception can be understood and quantified as dynamic processes evolving as functions of time. In this paper, we show that FDA is a statistical methodology well suited for research into the field of quantitative musical performance analysis. To demonstrate this suitability, we consider tempo data for 28 performances of Schumann's Träumerei and analyse them by means of functional principal component analysis (one of the most powerful descriptive tools included in FDA). Specifically, we investigate the commonalities and differences between different performances regarding (expressive) timing, and we cluster similar performances together. We conclude that musical data considered as functional data reveal performance structures that might otherwise go unnoticed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Modelling hierarchical musical structures with composite probabilistic networks

The thesis is organised as follows:• Chapter 2 provides background information on existing research in the field of computational music harmonisation and generation, as well as some the¬ oretical background on musical structures. Finally, the chapter concludes with an outline of the scope and aims of this research.• Chapter 3 provides a short overview of the field of Machine Learning, ex¬ plaining concepts such as entropy measures and smoothing. The definitions of Markov chains and Hidden Markov models are introduced together with their methods of inference.• Chapter 4 begins with the definition of Hierarchical Hidden Markov models and techniques for linear time inference. It continues by introducing the new concept of Input-Output HHMMs, an extension to the hierarchical models that is derived from Input-Output HMMs.• Chapter 5 is a short chapter that shows the importance of the music rep¬ resentation and model structures for this research, and gives details of the representation.• Chapter 6 outlines the design of the software used for the HHMM modelling, and gives details of the software implementation and use.• Chapter 7 describes how dynamic networks of models were used for the generation of new pieces of music using a "random walk" approach. Several different types of networks are presented, exploring the different possibilities of layering the musical structures and organising the networks.• Chapter 8 tries to evaluate musical examples that were generated with sev¬ eral different types of networks. The evaluation process is both subjective and objective, using the results of a listening experiment as well as cross entropy measures and musical theoretical rules.• Chapter 9 offers a discussion of the methodology of the approach, the con¬ figuration and design of networks and models as well as the learning and generation of the new musical structures.• Chapter 10 concludes the thesis by summarising the research's contribu¬ tions, evaluating whether the project scope has been fulfilled and the major goals of the research have been met

The Extended Importance of the Social Creation of Value in Evolutionary Processes

This is a single-authored paper delivered at the biennial European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) in Riva del Garda, Italy 28 – 29 August 2006 and published in proceedings. The paper proposed that computational modelling be employed in order to test two processes that might hypothetically distinguish particular dimensions of human creativity. The first process is identified by the researcher as one in which the pursuit of novelty in artistic invention – especially music – tends to words the production of increasingly perceptually complex artefacts. The second process moves from a perspective orientated towards the individual artist and the individual art work’s reception to a more collective one: namely, whether cultural behaviour that tends towards novelty might find itself being reinforced by clustering of similar activities. This latter process would be one that explains why the process of “making special” – that may distinguish art in an anthropological sense – is one that forms particularly strong community bonds. These bonds between novelty seekers – which in the case of the researchers paper can be understood as musicians or artists – may reciprocally reinforce to support yet more novelty seeking. The relation of art and the new is not itself innovative. Boris Groys’ “On The New” provides a scoping of that territory. What is innovative is the proposal to use of computer simulation of individual and collective behaviour as a kind of artificial laboratory to determine the complex tendencies that animate these processes of novelty seeking and, by extension, artistic production. Computationally simulating behaviour that parallels both novelty-seeking as an individual practice (the artist) and the emergence of clusters of novelty seekers (the artistic styles) may, according to the researcher, provide us with new insights the historical evolution of creativity

Representing chord sequences in OWL

Chord symbols and progressions are a common way to describe musical harmony. In this paper we present SEQ, a pattern representation using the Web Ontology Language OWL DL and its application to modelling chord sequences. SEQ provides a logical representation of order information, which is not available directly in OWL DL, together with an intuitive notation. It therefore allows the use of OWL reasoners for tasks such as classification of sequences by patterns and determining subsumption relationships between the patterns. The SEQ representation is used to express distinctive pattern obtained using data mining of multiple viewpoints of chord sequences

Transient Analysis for Music and Moving Images: Consideration for Television Advertising

In audiovisual composition, coupling montage moving images with music is common practice. Interpretation of the effect on an audioviewer's consequent interpretation of the composition is discursive and unquantified. Meth-odology for evaluating the audiovisual multimodal inter-activity is proposed, developing an analysis procedure via the study of modality interdependent transient structures, explained as forming the foundation of perception via the concept of Basic Exposure response to the stimulus. The research has implications for analysis of all audiovisual media, with practical implications in television advertis-ing as a discrete typology of target driven audiovisual presentation. Examples from contemporary advertising are used to explore typical transient interaction patterns and the consequences of which are discussed from the practical viewpoint of the audiovisual composer

Scaffolding, organisational structure and interpersonal interaction in musical activities with older people

The research reported here focuses on the organizational structure and facilitator strategies observed in musical activities with older people. The observations formed one part of the Music for Life Project, funded by the ESRC New Dynamics of Ageing Programme (http://www.newdynamics.group.shef.ac.uk/), which investigated the social, emotional and cognitive benefits of participation in community music making, amongst older people. Three hundred and ninety eight people aged 50+ were recruited from three case study sites offering diverse musical activities. Observations of 33 groups were analysed. Approximately half of the observed time was spent with participants engaged in practical music-making, supported by facilitators who sang or played along, conducted or accompanied. Facilitators spent a relatively small amount of time providing non-verbal modelling and very little participant discussion or facilitator attributional feedback was observed. The findings suggested that facilitators could develop their practice by a) making more extensive use of non-verbal modelling; b) creating space for open questioning and discussion, where participants are encouraged to contribute to setting goals; c) making more extensive use of attributional feedback that empowers learners to control their own learning; and d) vary the organizational structure and style in order to meet a range of diverse needs within groups of older learners