Music Information Retrieval Meets Music Education

This paper addresses the use of Music Information Retrieval (MIR) techniques in music education and their integration in learning software. A general overview of systems that are either commercially available or in research stage is presented. Furthermore, three well-known MIR methods used in music learning systems and their state-of-the-art are described: music transcription, solo and accompaniment track creation, and generation of performance instructions. As a representative example of a music learning system developed within the MIR community, the Songs2See software is outlined. Finally, challenges and directions for future research are described

Musical Forces in Claude Vivier’s Wo bist du Licht! and Trois airs pour un opéra imaginaire

Claude Vivier’s (1947–1983) idiosyncratic and moving composition style often evades traditional, pitch-centred approaches to music-theoretical analysis; however, the somatic and sensual qualities of his style encourage a metaphorical appreciation of his music. This study analyses Wo bist du Licht! (1981) and the first two airs from Trois airs pour un opéra imaginaire (1982), which both feature his technique sinusoïdale, from the perspective of conceptual metaphor and musical forces. At the centre of this study are the dominant conceptual metaphors that linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson identify as being integral to our understanding of time, and which music theorist Arnie Cox demonstrates also underlie our concept of motion and change in music. My approach builds on Steve Larson’s theory of musical forces, which qualifies the musical motion metaphor by invoking musical analogues to gravity, magnetism, and inertia. These, Larson demonstrates, operate in a predictable way in tonal music. The post-tonal context of Vivier’s music requires modification of Larson’s approach. To this end, I incorporate concepts borrowed from Robert Hatten and Matthew BaileyShea. From Hatten, I borrow the notion of a musical agent, and analogues to friction and momentum, only I qualify musical momentum as a combined perception of musical mass (manifested as register, density, and texture) and velocity (manifested as tempo). From BaileyShea, I borrow the concept of water and wind as non-sentient, unpredictable environmental forces. The wave and wind metaphors are particularly adept at conveying the changes in texture and intensity that the technique sinusoïdale affords. Because they complement force metaphors, I also include energy and other embodied, non-motion metaphors (e.g., kinetic/potential energy, pressure, timbre). Although not forces-based, timbre metaphors have corporeal connotations that are helpful in converying the changing mental states suggested in the second air of Trois airs. These metaphors rely on our intuitive understanding of motion and embodied experience to convey musical change. They enable us to discuss more phenomenological, abstract musical attributes by drawing on a familiar vocabulary rooted in sensorimotor experience. This approach resonates particularly well with the sensual nature of Vivier’s music

Analysis and resynthesis of polyphonic music

This thesis examines applications of Digital Signal Processing to the analysis, transformation, and resynthesis of musical audio. First I give an overview of the human perception of music. I then examine in detail the requirements for a system that can analyse, transcribe, process, and resynthesise monaural polyphonic music. I then describe and compare the possible hardware and software platforms. After this I describe a prototype hybrid system that attempts to carry out these tasks using a method based on additive synthesis. Next I present results from its application to a variety of musical examples, and critically assess its performance and limitations. I then address these issues in the design of a second system based on Gabor wavelets. I conclude by summarising the research and outlining suggestions for future developments

Automatic Transcription of Bass Guitar Tracks applied for Music Genre Classification and Sound Synthesis

Musiksignale bestehen in der Regel aus einer Überlagerung mehrerer Einzelinstrumente. Die meisten existierenden Algorithmen zur automatischen Transkription und Analyse von Musikaufnahmen im Forschungsfeld des Music Information Retrieval (MIR) versuchen, semantische Information direkt aus diesen gemischten Signalen zu extrahieren. In den letzten Jahren wurde häufig beobachtet, dass die Leistungsfähigkeit dieser Algorithmen durch die Signalüberlagerungen und den daraus resultierenden Informationsverlust generell limitiert ist. Ein möglicher Lösungsansatz besteht darin, mittels Verfahren der Quellentrennung die beteiligten Instrumente vor der Analyse klanglich zu isolieren. Die Leistungsfähigkeit dieser Algorithmen ist zum aktuellen Stand der Technik jedoch nicht immer ausreichend, um eine sehr gute Trennung der Einzelquellen zu ermöglichen. In dieser Arbeit werden daher ausschließlich isolierte Instrumentalaufnahmen untersucht, die klanglich nicht von anderen Instrumenten überlagert sind. Exemplarisch werden anhand der elektrischen Bassgitarre auf die Klangerzeugung dieses Instrumentes hin spezialisierte Analyse- und Klangsynthesealgorithmen entwickelt und evaluiert.Im ersten Teil der vorliegenden Arbeit wird ein Algorithmus vorgestellt, der eine automatische Transkription von Bassgitarrenaufnahmen durchführt. Dabei wird das Audiosignal durch verschiedene Klangereignisse beschrieben, welche den gespielten Noten auf dem Instrument entsprechen. Neben den üblichen Notenparametern Anfang, Dauer, Lautstärke und Tonhöhe werden dabei auch instrumentenspezifische Parameter wie die verwendeten Spieltechniken sowie die Saiten- und Bundlage auf dem Instrument automatisch extrahiert. Evaluationsexperimente anhand zweier neu erstellter Audiodatensätze belegen, dass der vorgestellte Transkriptionsalgorithmus auf einem Datensatz von realistischen Bassgitarrenaufnahmen eine höhere Erkennungsgenauigkeit erreichen kann als drei existierende Algorithmen aus dem Stand der Technik. Die Schätzung der instrumentenspezifischen Parameter kann insbesondere für isolierte Einzelnoten mit einer hohen Güte durchgeführt werden.Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit wird untersucht, wie aus einer Notendarstellung typischer sich wieder- holender Basslinien auf das Musikgenre geschlossen werden kann. Dabei werden Audiomerkmale extrahiert, welche verschiedene tonale, rhythmische, und strukturelle Eigenschaften von Basslinien quantitativ beschreiben. Mit Hilfe eines neu erstellten Datensatzes von 520 typischen Basslinien aus 13 verschiedenen Musikgenres wurden drei verschiedene Ansätze für die automatische Genreklassifikation verglichen. Dabei zeigte sich, dass mit Hilfe eines regelbasierten Klassifikationsverfahrens nur Anhand der Analyse der Basslinie eines Musikstückes bereits eine mittlere Erkennungsrate von 64,8 % erreicht werden konnte.Die Re-synthese der originalen Bassspuren basierend auf den extrahierten Notenparametern wird im dritten Teil der Arbeit untersucht. Dabei wird ein neuer Audiosynthesealgorithmus vorgestellt, der basierend auf dem Prinzip des Physical Modeling verschiedene Aspekte der für die Bassgitarre charakteristische Klangerzeugung wie Saitenanregung, Dämpfung, Kollision zwischen Saite und Bund sowie dem Tonabnehmerverhalten nachbildet. Weiterhin wird ein parametrischerAudiokodierungsansatz diskutiert, der es erlaubt, Bassgitarrenspuren nur anhand der ermittel- ten notenweisen Parameter zu übertragen um sie auf Dekoderseite wieder zu resynthetisieren. Die Ergebnisse mehrerer Hötest belegen, dass der vorgeschlagene Synthesealgorithmus eine Re- Synthese von Bassgitarrenaufnahmen mit einer besseren Klangqualität ermöglicht als die Übertragung der Audiodaten mit existierenden Audiokodierungsverfahren, die auf sehr geringe Bitraten ein gestellt sind.Music recordings most often consist of multiple instrument signals, which overlap in time and frequency. In the field of Music Information Retrieval (MIR), existing algorithms for the automatic transcription and analysis of music recordings aim to extract semantic information from mixed audio signals. In the last years, it was frequently observed that the algorithm performance is limited due to the signal interference and the resulting loss of information. One common approach to solve this problem is to first apply source separation algorithms to isolate the present musical instrument signals before analyzing them individually. The performance of source separation algorithms strongly depends on the number of instruments as well as on the amount of spectral overlap.In this thesis, isolated instrumental tracks are analyzed in order to circumvent the challenges of source separation. Instead, the focus is on the development of instrument-centered signal processing algorithms for music transcription, musical analysis, as well as sound synthesis. The electric bass guitar is chosen as an example instrument. Its sound production principles are closely investigated and considered in the algorithmic design.In the first part of this thesis, an automatic music transcription algorithm for electric bass guitar recordings will be presented. The audio signal is interpreted as a sequence of sound events, which are described by various parameters. In addition to the conventionally used score-level parameters note onset, duration, loudness, and pitch, instrument-specific parameters such as the applied instrument playing techniques and the geometric position on the instrument fretboard will be extracted. Different evaluation experiments confirmed that the proposed transcription algorithm outperformed three state-of-the-art bass transcription algorithms for the transcription of realistic bass guitar recordings. The estimation of the instrument-level parameters works with high accuracy, in particular for isolated note samples.In the second part of the thesis, it will be investigated, whether the sole analysis of the bassline of a music piece allows to automatically classify its music genre. Different score-based audio features will be proposed that allow to quantify tonal, rhythmic, and structural properties of basslines. Based on a novel data set of 520 bassline transcriptions from 13 different music genres, three approaches for music genre classification were compared. A rule-based classification system could achieve a mean class accuracy of 64.8 % by only taking features into account that were extracted from the bassline of a music piece.The re-synthesis of a bass guitar recordings using the previously extracted note parameters will be studied in the third part of this thesis. Based on the physical modeling of string instruments, a novel sound synthesis algorithm tailored to the electric bass guitar will be presented. The algorithm mimics different aspects of the instrument’s sound production mechanism such as string excitement, string damping, string-fret collision, and the influence of the electro-magnetic pickup. Furthermore, a parametric audio coding approach will be discussed that allows to encode and transmit bass guitar tracks with a significantly smaller bit rate than conventional audio coding algorithms do. The results of different listening tests confirmed that a higher perceptual quality can be achieved if the original bass guitar recordings are encoded and re-synthesized using the proposed parametric audio codec instead of being encoded using conventional audio codecs at very low bit rate settings

Trois perspectives sur le timbre de la flûte traversière : instrumentale, perceptive et computationnelle

Fichiers sonores complémentairesLe but de cette thèse est de décrire le timbre de la flûte traversière de manière précise et détaillée à partir d’approches qui se regroupent en trois axes principaux : l’expertise instrumentale, la perception, et l’informatique musicale. Des disciplines telles que l’organologie, la pédagogie instrumentale, l’analyse musicale perceptive, l’acoustique, la psychoacoustique, les sciences de l’information et la composition musicale seront mises à contribution afin de cerner ce qui caractérise le timbre de la flûte. Plusieurs aspects relatifs au point de vue instrumental seront investigués. D’abord, il sera question de l’histoire du développement organologique de la flûte et des considérations pratiques et esthétiques qui ont contribué à faire évoluer l’instrument jusqu’à sa forme actuelle. On fera un survol de la pédagogie instrumentale associée à la flûte, puis on abordera la notion de technique de jeu étendue. Un inventaire des différentes techniques de jeu sera ensuite proposé à travers une revue des principaux traités, puis ces techniques seront classifiées selon différents systèmes. Ensuite, l’utilisation d’outils d’analyse musicale perceptive conçus pour les musiques élec- troacoustiques sera explorée pour son potentiel quant à la description du timbre instrumental. Les approches typomorphologique et spectromorphologique, respectivement proposées par Pierre Schaeffer et Denis Smalley, seront investiguées. À travers deux approches distinctes de l’écoute musicale et de la description d’événements sonores, on verra dans quelle mesure les outils pro- posés peuvent s’inscrire dans cette démarche de caractérisation du timbre. Puis, après avoir fait la distinction entre les manières d’appréhender le timbre propres aux sciences de l’information et aux sciences cognitives, une revue de littérature relative aux expériences sur la perception du timbre en psychoacoustique sera présentée. Enfin, on fera un tour d’horizon des librairies informatiques d’analyse du timbre, qui sera suivi de la définition des principaux descripteurs acoustiques du timbre qui seront utilisés dans cette thèse. Les trois derniers chapitres porteront sur des analyses acoustiques effectuées sur des échantillons de sons de flûte représentatifs de la plupart des modes de jeu et des nuances de timbre de l’instrument. Dans un premier cas, une analyse par composantes principales effectuée sur une série de descripteurs du timbre permettra de déterminer de quelles manières les groupes de sons se distinguent, ainsi que les principaux descripteurs qui rendent cette distinction possible. Une deuxième expérience visera à mettre en relation des descripteurs de timbre particuliers afin de valider ou préciser certains résultats obtenus à l’expérience précédente. Finalement, le dernier chapitre portera sur une troisième expérience où des sons modulés par différents types de vibrato et des changements continus (de voyelle, de brillance, de hauteur) seront analysés grâce à un suivi en temps réel d’une série de descripteurs acoustiques, grâce à la librairie zsa.descriptors dans l’environnement Max. L’objectif est double : premièrement, on voudra observer ce qui caractérise les modulations et les changements de timbre analysés. Deuxièmement, il s’agira de mieux comprendre le comportement des descripteurs en présence de timbres changeants, de manière à pouvoir les intégrer efficacement à une stratégie de mappage musical ou audiovisuel.The aim of this thesis is to describe transverse flute timbre in a detailed and precise way, based on approaches that can be grouped in three main axes : instrumental, perceptual, and computational. Research disciplines such as organology, instrumental pedagogy, perceptual musical analysis, acoustics, psychoacoustics, information science and musical composition will contribute to determine which are the elements that characterize flute timbre. Many aspects related to the instrumental axis will be investigated. First, a historical view of the instrument’s organology is presented, with a special focus on practical and aesthetical aspects that influenced its evolution until nowadays. After an overview of instrumental pedagogy from the 19th Century onwards, the notion of extended technique is explained. Then, flute extended techniques are presented through a review of the main treatises on the subject, and a classification based on various systems is proposed. For the perceptual axis, perceptual musical analysis tools conceived for electroacoustic music are explored for their descriptive potential in regard of instrumental timbre. Typomorphological and spectromorphological approaches, as developed respectively by Pierre Schaeffer and Denis Smalley, are investigated. The aim is to see in what extent these two musical event description tools and distinct conceptions of musical listening can be useful in characterizing flute timbre. Furthermore, after distinctions between approaches such as those of music information retrieval and cognitive sciences have been made, a literature review of the major experiments on timbre perception in psychoacoustics is presented. Then, for the computational axis, the main libraries for timbre analysis are presented, after which a definition of the temporal, spectral, spectro-temporal, and harmonic timbre descriptors that will be used later on is given. The last three chapters are dedicated to acoustical analysis made on flute samples that are representative of most of the instrument’s playing techniques and timbre changes. A first experiment consists of a principal component analysis made on 34 timbre descriptors, in order to determine how groups of sounds are distinguishable from one another, and to find out which are the main descriptors that make this differentiation possible. A second experiment combines particular descriptors as an attempt to confirm and/or to precise the results v of the first experiment. Finally, a third experiment consists of a real-time analysis of sounds modulated by different kinds of vibrato, fluttertongue, and of some continuous timbre changes (such as vowel, brightness and pitch variations), made with zsa.descriptors objects in Max. This investigation has a twofold goal : first, to observe what characterizes the sound modulations and changes. And second, to better understand how descriptors vary over the course of time when applied to timbre changes, in order to be able to conceive effective mapping strategies in the context of electroacoustic mixed music and audiovisual interaction

Musical Composition in the Context of Globalization

Since the early transformation of European music practice and theory in the cultural centers of Asia, Latin America, and Africa around 1900, it has become necessary for music history to be conceived globally - a challenge that musicology has hardly faced yet. This book discusses the effects of cultural globalization on processes of composition and distribution of art music in the 20th and 21st century. Christian Utz provides the foundations of a global music historiography, building on new models such as transnationalism, entangled histories, and reflexive globalization. The relationship between music and broader changes in society forms the central focus and is treated as a pivotal music-historical dynamic

An Application of the Principles of Anatomy, Physiology, and Neurology to the Balancing and Playing of the Flute

Flutists encounter significant physical problems in the course of their everyday playing of the instrument and frequently are not given the detailed and accurate scientific teaching and training that would prevent the problems in the first place. The purpose of this study is to investigate the prevalence and scope of performance-related problems among flutists and then to provide science-based teaching about how the body organizes itself to play the flute. Physical difficulties related to playing the flute are analyzed through a large-sample online survey and personal interviews with six prominent flutists. The second half of the document is a scholarly application of the scientific knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and neurology to the physical action of flute playing. The survey data encompasses the combined responses of 181 respondents with results indicating that a majority of flutists experience pain related to their playing yet have little training in prevention. The dramatic stories of performance-related injuries by the selected interviewees serve to underscore the need for more education for musicians and research by scientists in the field of performance arts medicine. Applying the facts and principles of anatomy, physiology, and neurology to the playing of the flute presents today's flutists with many new science-based concepts to consider while they are practicing or performing. Because of the asymmetrical body position required to play the flute and the unstopped arrangement of our embouchure, flutists must put more emphasis on achieving a healthy posture and balanced stance for playing that supports the active respiratory demands of the instrument