Screen Scores: New Media Music Manuscripts

This paper examines the screening of music notations and the impact of this configuration in a live music performance situation. Before the development of graphical computing, Traditional music notation, was rarely shared with the anyone other than other musicians, composers and analysts; let alone displayed during the performance. However, some composers experiment with scores and their visual presence in performance by employing automated ‘score-players’ or actual films specifically developed to be interpreted by musicians. This paper raises some questions and possibilities for this new way of sharing musical qualities of composition and performance

Interactive Music and Synchronous Reactive Programming

This paper presents Skini, a programming methodology and an execution environment for interactive structured music. With this system, the composer programs his scores in the HipHop.js synchronous reactive language. They are then executed, or played, in live concerts, in interaction with the audience. The system aims at helping composers to find a good balance between the determinism of the compositions and the nondeterminism of the interactions with the public. Each execution of a Skini score yields to a different but aesthetically consistent interpretation. This work raises many questions in the musical fields. How to combine composition and interaction? How to control the musical style when the audience influences what is to play next? What are the possible connections with generative music? These are important questions for the Skini system but they are out of the scope of this paper that focuses exclusively on the computer science aspects of the system. From that perspective, the main questions are how to program the scores and in which language? General purpose languages are inappropriate because their elementary constructs (i.e., variables, functions, loops, etc.) do not match the constructions needed to express music and musical constraints. We show that synchronous programming languages are a much better fit because they rely on temporal constructs that can be directly used to represent musical scores and because their malleability enables composers to experiment easily with artistic variations of their initial scores. The paper mostly focuses on scores programming. It exposes the process a composer should follow from his very first musical intuitions up to the generation of a musical artifact. The paper presents some excerpts of the programming of a classical music composition that it then precisely relates to an actual recording. Examples of techno music and jazz are also presented, with audio artifact, to demonstrate the versatility of the system. Finally, brief presentations of past live concerts are presented as an evidence of viability of the system

MIDI-based music score editor

[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

Performance Practice of Real-Time Notation

This paper addresses the performance practice issues encountered when the notation of a work loosens its bounds in the world of the fixed and knowable, and explores the realms of chance, spontaneity, and interactivity. Some of these performance practice issues include the problem of rehearsal, the problem of ensemble synchronization, the extreme limits of sight-reading, strategies for dealing with failure in performance, new freedoms for the performer and composer, and new opportunities offered by the ephemerality and multiplicity of real-time notation

Web service composition: A survey of techniques and tools

Web services are a consolidated reality of the modern Web with tremendous, increasing impact on everyday computing tasks. They turned the Web into the largest, most accepted, and most vivid distributed computing platform ever. Yet, the use and integration of Web services into composite services or applications, which is a highly sensible and conceptually non-trivial task, is still not unleashing its full magnitude of power. A consolidated analysis framework that advances the fundamental understanding of Web service composition building blocks in terms of concepts, models, languages, productivity support techniques, and tools is required. This framework is necessary to enable effective exploration, understanding, assessing, comparing, and selecting service composition models, languages, techniques, platforms, and tools. This article establishes such a framework and reviews the state of the art in service composition from an unprecedented, holistic perspective

The Evolution of Notational Innovations from the Mobile Score to the Screen Score

This article examines the evolution of music notational practices from avant-garde-era experiments in ‘mobility’ to the advent of the digital ‘screen score’. It considers the varied goals of the composers who initiated these developments and the dissonance between these goals and the practical possibilities actually afforded by the paper score. The advent of graphical computing is charted along with the consequent expansion of possibilities afforded by screening the score from a platform that also provides the potential for performer coordination, sound synthesis and transformation. The performative, interactive and formal implications of these possibilities are considered

Improvisation, Computers, and Interaction : Rethinking Human-Computer Interaction Through Music

Interaction is an integral part of all music. Interaction is part of listening, of playing, of composing and even of thinking about music. In this thesis the multiplicity of modes in which one may engage interactively in, through and with music is the starting point for rethinking Human-Computer Interaction in general and Interactive Music in particular. I propose that in Human-Computer interaction the methodology of control, interaction-as-control, in certain cases should be given up in favor for a more dynamic and reciprocal mode of interaction, interaction-as-difference: Interaction as an activity concerned with inducing differences that make a difference. Interaction-as-difference suggests a kind of parallelity rather than click-and-response. In essence, the movement from control to difference was a result of rediscovering the power of improvisation as a method for organizing and constructing musical content and is not to be understood as an opposition: It is rather a broadening of the more common paradigm of direct manipulation in Human-Computer Interaction. Improvisation is at the heart of all the sub-projects included in this thesis, also, in fact, in those that are not immediately related to music but more geared towards computation. Trusting the self-organizing aspect of musical improvisation, and allowing it to diffuse into other areas of my practice, constitutes the pivotal change that has radically influenced my artistic practice. Furthermore, is the work-in-movement (re-)introduced as a work kind that encompasses radically open works. The work-in-movement, presented and exemplified by a piece for guitar and computer, requires different modes of representation as the traditional musical score is too restrictive and is not able to communicate that which is the most central aspect: the collaboration, negotiation and interaction. The Integra framework and the relational database model with its corresponding XML representation is proposed as a means to produce annotated scores that carry past performances and version with it. The common nominator, the prerequisite, for interaction-as-difference and a improvisatory and self-organizing attitude towards musical practice it the notion of giving up of the Self. Only if the Self is able and willing to accept the loss the priority of interpretation (as for the composer) or the faithfulness to ideology or idiomatics (performer). Only is one is willing to forget is interaction-as-difference made possible. Among the artistic works that have been produced as part of this inquiry are some experimental tools in the form of computer software to support the proposed concepts of interactivity. These, along with the more traditional musical work make up both the object and the method in this PhD project. These sub-projects contained within the frame of the thesis, some (most) of which are still works-in-progress, are used to make inquiries into the larger question of the significance of interaction in the context of artistic practice involving computers

Music in Virtual Space: Theories and Techniques for Sound Spatialization and Virtual Reality-Based Stage Performance

This research explores virtual reality as a medium for live concert performance. I have realized compositions in which the individual performing on stage uses a VR head-mounted display complemented by other performance controllers to explore a composed virtual space. Movements and objects within the space are used to influence and control sound spatialization and diffusion, musical form, and sonic content. Audience members observe this in real-time, watching the performer\u27s journey through the virtual space on a screen while listening to spatialized audio on loudspeakers variable in number and position. The major artistic challenge I will explore through this activity is the relationship between virtual space and musical form. I will also explore and document the technical challenges of this activity, resulting in a shareable software tool called the Multi-source Ambisonic Spatialization Interface (MASI), which is useful in creating a bridge between VR technologies and associated software, ambisonic spatialization techniques, sound synthesis, and audio playback and effects, and establishes a unique workflow for working with sound in virtual space

Mobile-Based Interactive Music for Public Spaces

With the emergence of modern mobile devices equipped with various types of built-in sensors, interactive art has become easily accessible to everyone, musicians and non-musicians alike. These efficient computers are able to analyze human activity, location, gesture, etc., and based on this information dynamically change, or create an artwork in realtime. This thesis presents an interactive mobile system that solely uses the standard embedded sensors available in current typical smart devices such as phones, and tablets to create an audio-only augmented reality for a singled out public space in order to explore the potential for social-musical interaction, without the need for any significant external infrastructure

LC: A Mostly-strongly-timed Prototype-based Computer Music Programming Language that Integrates Objects and Manipulations for Microsound Synthesis

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH