Generation of Two-Voice Imitative Counterpoint from Statistical Models

Generating new music based on rules of counterpoint has been deeply studied in music informatics. In this article, we try to go further, exploring a method for generating new music based on the style of Palestrina, based on combining statistical generation and pattern discovery. A template piece is used for pattern discovery, and the patterns are selected and organized according to a probabilistic distribution, using horizontal viewpoints to describe melodic properties of events. Once the template is covered with patterns, two-voice counterpoint in a florid style is generated into those patterns using a first-order Markov model. The template method solves the problem of coherence and imitation never addressed before in previous research in counterpoint music generation. For constructing the Markov model, vertical slices of pitch and rhythm are compiled over a large corpus of dyads from Palestrina masses. The template enforces different restrictions that filter the possible paths through the generation process. A double backtracking algorithm is implemented to handle cases where no solutions are found at some point within a generation path. Results are evaluated by both information content and listener evaluation, and the paper concludes with a proposed relationship between musical quality and information content. Part of this research has been presented at SMC 2016 in Hamburg, Germany

AI Methods in Algorithmic Composition: A Comprehensive Survey

Algorithmic composition is the partial or total automation of the process of music composition by using computers. Since the 1950s, different computational techniques related to Artificial Intelligence have been used for algorithmic composition, including grammatical representations, probabilistic methods, neural networks, symbolic rule-based systems, constraint programming and evolutionary algorithms. This survey aims to be a comprehensive account of research on algorithmic composition, presenting a thorough view of the field for researchers in Artificial Intelligence.This study was partially supported by a grant for the MELOMICS project (IPT-300000-2010-010) from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, and a grant for the CAUCE project (TSI-090302-2011-8) from the Spanish Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio. The first author was supported by a grant for the GENEX project (P09-TIC- 5123) from the Consejería de Innovación y Ciencia de Andalucía

Idiosyncratic Critiques of Dodecaphony: Thomas Wilson’s \u3ci\u3eThree Pieces\u3c/i\u3e (1961) and \u3ci\u3eSoliloquy\u3c/i\u3e (1969)

Is the history of British twelve-tone guitar music a binary one, characterized by devotee practitioners and their vituperative detractors, or did some British guitar composers experiment with, but ultimately remain ambivalent about, dodecaphony? Chapter 3 argues that the solo guitar pieces of the Glaswegian composer Thomas Wilson might be thought to provide a provisional set of answers to these questions. In a nutshell: they manifest critiques of dodecaphony in the form of musical notation. Writing at a distance from the modernist centers of British musical fashion, Wilson started to experiment with both guitar composition and twelve-tone serialism in the early 1960s. His first guitar work, Three Pieces, bakes a problem into its opening row: potential inversional symmetry between its first and third tetrachords is disrupted, resulting in an otherwise impossible foreground transpositional consistency between dyads. Much of the movement is spent trying to resolve this tension between different pitch parameters. And yet because Wilson sticks doggedly to a single row form in the piece’s opening Allegro molto, this proves to be a difficult task. Whether this is down to an impoverished understanding of the possibilities of serialism, or because the method’s “inherent” restrictions (as Wilson saw them) were being purposefully caricatured, the resulting harmonic monotony leads to a non-row derived pentachord’s becoming the work’s expressive apex. This desire for variety—“impossible” within a serial universe, at least as Wilson presents it—leads to a freely atonal slow movement. The Finale attempts to synthesize these two extremes: namely, strict serial procedure and free post-tonal composition. No clear reconciliation is reached; the movement’s expressive apex is once again a non-row derived pc set. While the work’s end marks a return to the opening row, its gelid articulation does not suggest attainment or triumph. In the later Soliloquy, it seems at first glance as if Wilson has turned away from dodecaphony proper. On closer inspection, it becomes apparent that a twelve-tone “chorale” near the end of its first section might function as a skeleton key: it unlocks a fresh understanding of the generation of the work’s opening materials, which are based on exactly the same set classes. While dodecaphony is portrayed in Three Pieces as a barrier to creativity—as something to be overcome—in Soliloquy, it provides a sublated means of freeing up creative possibilities. The consequence of its acceptance by Wilson, however, is that the row basically vanishes from the musical surface. Soliloquy, in classic dialectical fashion, both is and is not a twelve-tone work

Multimodal Behavioral Biometric Authentication in Smartphones for Covid-19 Pandemic

The usage of mobile phones has increased multi-fold in recent decades, mostly because of their utility in most aspects of daily life, such as communications, entertainment, and financial transactions. In use cases where users’ information is at risk from imposter attacks, biometrics-based authentication systems such as fingerprint or facial recognition are considered the most trustworthy in comparison to PIN, password, or pattern-based authentication systems in smartphones. Biometrics need to be presented at the time of power-on, they cannot be guessed or attacked through brute force and eliminate the possibility of shoulder surfing. However, fingerprints or facial recognition-based systems in smartphones may not be applicable in a pandemic situation like Covid-19, where hand gloves or face masks are mandatory to protect against unwanted exposure of the body parts. This paper investigates the situations in which fingerprints cannot be utilized due to hand gloves and hence presents an alternative biometric system using the multimodal Touchscreen swipe and Keystroke dynamics pattern. We propose a HandGlove mode of authentication where the system will automatically be triggered to authenticate a user based on Touchscreen swipe and Keystroke dynamics patterns. Our experimental results suggest that the proposed multimodal biometric system can operate with high accuracy. We experiment with different classifiers like Isolation Forest Classifier, SVM, k-NN Classifier, and fuzzy logic classifier with SVM to obtain the best authentication accuracy of 99.55% with 197 users on the Samsung Galaxy S20. We further study the problem of untrained external factors which can impact the user experience of authentication system and propose a model based on fuzzy logic to extend the functionality of the system to improve under novel external effects. In this experiment, we considered the untrained external factor of ‘sanitized hands’ with which the user tries to authenticate and achieved 93.5% accuracy in this scenario. The proposed multimodal system could be one of the most sought approaches for biometrics-based authentication in smartphones in a COVID-19 pandemic situation

Behavioral biometric based personal authentication in feature phones

The usage of mobile phones has increased multifold in the recent decades mostly because of its utility in most of the aspects of daily life, such as communications, entertainment, and financial transactions. Feature phones are generally the keyboard based or lower version of touch based mobile phones, mostly targeted for efficient calling and messaging. In comparison to smart phones, feature phones have no provision of a biometrics system for the user access. The literature, have shown very less attempts in designing a biometrics system which could be most suitable to the low-cost feature phones. A biometric system utilizes the features and attributes based on the physiological or behavioral properties of the individual. In this research, we explore the usefulness of keystroke dynamics for feature phones which offers an efficient and versatile biometric framework. In our research, we have suggested an approach to incorporate the user’s typing patterns to enhance the security in the feature phone. We have applied k-nearest neighbors (k-NN) with fuzzy logic and achieved the equal error rate (EER) 1.88% to get the better accuracy. The experiments are performed with 25 users on Samsung On7 Pro C3590. On comparison, our proposed technique is competitive with almost all the other techniques available in the literature

Aspects of Order in Language and in Music : A Referential-Structural Research on Universals

This research and practice project studies the way in which some aspects of linguistic order are also found in music’s order. Whereas some aspects of order and organisation are attributed to music because of their psychophysical integration, other aspects seem to be more related to the configuration of music in memory and experience (i.e. individual memory and memory-in-society processes). This fundamental condition is shared with speech and visual symbolizing. Since order in music is commonly referred and/or justified by verbal or visual language, several cases of analogy and metaphor are studied, in the context of music composition and analysis. This project also discusses the role of figuration and referentiality in some examples of geometry associated with musical ideas, in order to analyse how such mediums are intertwined with speech and musical constructions

Towards a typology of critical nonprofit studies: A literature review

This review examines scholarship in key nonprofit journals over four decades. Its purpose is to: 1) analyze the extent, nature, and contribution of critical nonprofit scholarship and its trajectory over time, and 2) call on scholars, research institutions, and journals in the field to engage the kinds of insights these increasingly marginalized approaches bring, providing space for them to join, challenge and shape the research conversation. Findings show only 4% of articles published within the period examined adopt critical approaches, with great variability in the ways articles exemplify core tenets of critical scholarship, and a general dampening of critical work over time. This conservatism may result from the rejection of less understood philosophies and methodologies of critical inquiry in favor of more mainstream (positivistic) models of social science. Our primary contribution is to advance a typology explicating the pluralism inherent in critical approaches to nonprofit studies, their strengths and limitations

EXPOSING CORRUPTION IN PROGRESSIVE ROCK: A SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF GENTLE GIANT’S THE POWER AND THE GLORY

English progressive rock band Gentle Giant is catalogued under the progressive (or “prog”) rock genre for a variety reasons, including unique instrumentation, virtuosity, and interesting/unconventional musical attributes. The complexity of their music is often warranted by the sophisticated concepts behind their albums and the deep messages of their songs. The Power and the Glory (TPatG), Gentle Giant’s sixth studio album, is a concept album that emphasizes the rise and corruption of power. What makes their music, especially TPatG, worthy of scholarly attention beyond the simple examination of the compositional techniques employed is the way in which the message of their compositions is conveyed, and how that message is interpreted. In this project, I investigate the elements that contribute to this album’s theme via semiotic analysis. I begin by exploring the discipline of semiotics as a method for analysis. Largely applied to language and literature, semiotic analysis has been recently adapted and applied to music study. Jean Molino’s method proposes a tripartite model for the analysis of music: analyses at poietic, neutral, and esthesic levels. A poietic level analysis examines the circumstances of the music’s creation, including origination, composition, production, and performance. Situating Gentle Giant among their contemporaries and TPatG among the band’s discography by outlining their history (both personal and professional) illuminates the conditions under which the album was generated and produced. An analysis of the neutral level defines the musical “trace,” or those quantifiable elements of the music (i.e., objective elements such as pitch, rhythm, etc.). These structures are explained in light of their usage throughout history and their impact on the album’s overarching theme of the corruption of power. An esthesic analysis describes the reception and interpretation of the music. I examine the socio-cultural impact the album has made and the influence it has had on musicians throughout the years. Molino’s tripartite method of analysis supports a comprehensive understanding of Gentle Giant’s TPatG, not solely musically by examining its structures, but socio-culturally as a part of the progressive-rock culture and, indeed, the broader music industry of the 1970s

Sistema computacional aplicado ao contraponto musical

Na teoria musical, o contraponto é uma técnica compositiva que permite a adição de novas melodias a um cantus firmus por meio do uso de restrições lógicas. O algoritmo proposto neste artigo utiliza o método de aprendizagem por reforço Q-Learning para resolver o problema do contraponto de primeira espécie. Para realizar essa tarefa, é utilizado um conjunto de regras que geram recompensas e que atualizam iterativamente o modelo. Ao final de todo o processo, o sistema produz uma nova melodia adequada à melodia de referência. Esse artigo apresenta detalhes da implementação e uma breve discussão dos resultados

Ethnographies of social enterprise

Purpose – As a critical and intimate form of inquiry, ethnography remains close to lived realities and equips scholars with a unique methodological angle on social phenomena. This paper aims to explore the potential gains from an increased use of ethnography in social enterprise studies. Design/methodology/approach – The authors develop the argument through a set of dualistic themes, namely, the socio-economic dichotomy and the discourse/practice divide as predominant critical lenses through which social enterprise is currently examined, and suggest shifts from visible leaders to invisible collectives and from case study-based monologues to dialogic ethnography. Findings – Ethnography sheds new light on at least four neglected aspects. Studying social enterprises ethnographically complicates simple reductions to socio-economic tensions, by enriching the set of differences through which practitioners make sense of their work-world. Ethnography provides a tool for unravelling how practitioners engage with discourse(s) of power, thus marking the concrete results of intervention (to some degree at least) as unplannable, and yet effective. Ethnographic examples signal the merits of moving beyond leaders towards more collective representations and in-depth accounts of (self-)development. Reflexive ethnographies demonstrate the heuristic value of accepting the self as an inevitable part of research and exemplify insights won through a thoroughly bodily and emotional commitment to sharing the life world of others. Originality/value – The present volume collects original ethnographic research of social enterprises. The editorial develops the first consistent account of the merits of studying social enterprises ethnographically