Piano Genie

We present Piano Genie, an intelligent controller which allows non-musicians to improvise on the piano. With Piano Genie, a user performs on a simple interface with eight buttons, and their performance is decoded into the space of plausible piano music in real time. To learn a suitable mapping procedure for this problem, we train recurrent neural network autoencoders with discrete bottlenecks: an encoder learns an appropriate sequence of buttons corresponding to a piano piece, and a decoder learns to map this sequence back to the original piece. During performance, we substitute a user's input for the encoder output, and play the decoder's prediction each time the user presses a button. To improve the intuitiveness of Piano Genie's performance behavior, we impose musically meaningful constraints over the encoder's outputs.Comment: Published as a conference paper at ACM IUI 201

A Memetic Analysis of a Phrase by Beethoven: Calvinian Perspectives on Similarity and Lexicon-Abstraction

This article discusses some general issues arising from the study of similarity in music, both human-conducted and computer-aided, and then progresses to a consideration of similarity relationships between patterns in a phrase by Beethoven, from the first movement of the Piano Sonata in A flat major op. 110 (1821), and various potential memetic precursors. This analysis is followed by a consideration of how the kinds of similarity identified in the Beethoven phrase might be understood in psychological/conceptual and then neurobiological terms, the latter by means of William Calvin’s Hexagonal Cloning Theory. This theory offers a mechanism for the operation of David Cope’s concept of the lexicon, conceived here as a museme allele-class. I conclude by attempting to correlate and map the various spaces within which memetic replication occurs

Effort in gestural interactions with imaginary objects in Hindustani Dhrupad vocal music

Physical effort has often been regarded as a key factor of expressivity in music performance. Nevertheless, systematic experimental approaches to the subject have been rare. In North Indian classical (Hindustani) vocal music, singers often engage with melodic ideas during improvisation by manipulating intangible, imaginary objects with their hands, such as through stretching, pulling, pushing, throwing etc. The above observation suggests that some patterns of change in acoustic features allude to interactions that real objects through their physical properties can afford. The present study reports on the exploration of the relationships between movement and sound by accounting for the physical effort that such interactions require in the Dhrupad genre of Hindustani vocal improvisation. The work follows a mixed methodological approach, combining qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse interviews, audio-visual material and movement data. Findings indicate that despite the flexibility in the way a Dhrupad vocalist might use his/her hands while singing, there is a certain degree of consistency by which performers associate effort levels with melody and types of gestural interactions with imaginary objects. However, different schemes of cross-modal associations are revealed for the vocalists analysed, that depend on the pitch space organisation of each particular melodic mode (rāga), the mechanical requirements of voice production, the macro-structure of the ālāp improvisation and morphological cross-domain analogies. Results further suggest that a good part of the variance in both physical effort and gesture type can be explained through a small set of sound and movement features. Based on the findings, I argue that gesturing in Dhrupad singing is guided by: the know-how of humans in interacting with and exerting effort on real objects of the environment, the movement–sound relationships transmitted from teacher to student in the oral music training context and the mechanical demands of vocalisation

'You Hum It, I'll Play It!' The role of memory in playing the piano by ear.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate playing by ear amongst pianists, and determine the cognitive-psychological skills underlying playing-by-ear ability. Whilst earlier studies have focussed on melodic playing-by-ear abilities, mainly amongst children who play wind and string instruments, no studies hitherto have considered two-handed, harmonised playing by ear in adult pianists, or considered the cognitive-psychological factors that facilitate it. Adopting a range of quantitative and qualitative approaches, the thesis contains four individual studies, the first of which is a survey that elicits the views, opinions and beliefs of over 150 trained, adult pianists on playing by ear. Thematic analysis allows a profile of both by-ear and non-by-ear pianists to be drawn, and raises questions regarding the spontaneous nature of playing the piano by ear. The second study is an empirical investigation that uses an author-designed assessment tool to measure the abilities of 29 trained, adult pianists to realise familiar, orchestral music for by-ear piano performance. A more qualitative observation study follows that examines the strategies and practical techniques these pianists employ whilst preparing their by-ear realisations. A number of musical and motor memory skills are identified that have the potential to facilitate playing-by-ear ability, and a theoretical model of the cognitive-psychological process of playing by ear is proposed. During the final study, participants’ levels of musical and motor memory are assessed, using a suite of author-designed measures, and the results compared with their playing-by-ear abilities to determine the individual and collective influence of these memory skills on playing by ear. Results suggest that a quantitative difference exists between spontaneous, harmonised by-ear realisations and those that are worked out through trial and error; and that recall memory has a strong influence on two-handed, harmonised playing-by-ear ability. The validity of the proposed cognitive-psychological model is discussed

Unsupervised statistical learning underpins computational, behavioural, and neural manifestations of musical expectation

The ability to anticipate forthcoming events has clear evolutionary advantages, and predictive successes or failures often entail significant psychological and physiological consequences. In music perception, the confirmation and violation of expectations are critical to the communication of emotion and aesthetic effects of a composition. Neuroscientific research on musical expectations has focused on harmony. Although harmony is important in Western tonal styles, other musical traditions, emphasizing pitch and melody, have been rather neglected. In this study, we investigated melodic pitch expectations elicited by ecologically valid musical stimuli by drawing together computational, behavioural, and electrophysiological evidence. Unlike rule-based models, our computational model acquires knowledge through unsupervised statistical learning of sequential structure in music and uses this knowledge to estimate the conditional probability (and information content) of musical notes. Unlike previous behavioural paradigms that interrupt a stimulus, we devised a new paradigm for studying auditory expectation without compromising ecological validity. A strong negative correlation was found between the probability of notes predicted by our model and the subjectively perceived degree of expectedness. Our electrophysiological results showed that low-probability notes, as compared to high-probability notes, elicited a larger (i) negative ERP component at a late time period (400–450 ms), (ii) beta band (14–30 Hz) oscillation over the parietal lobe, and (iii) long-range phase synchronization between multiple brain regions. Altogether, the study demonstrated that statistical learning produces information-theoretic descriptions of musical notes that are proportional to their perceived expectedness and are associated with characteristic patterns of neural activity

Bach speaks: A cortical "language-network" serves the processing of music

The aim of the present study was the investigation of neural correlates of music processing with fMRI. Chord sequences were presented to the participants, infrequently containing unexpected musical events. These events activated the areas of Broca and Wernicke, the superior temporal sulcus, Heschl's gyrus, both planum polare and planum temporale, as well as the anterior superior insular cortices. Some of these brain structures have previously been shown to be involved in music processing, but the cortical network comprising all these structures has up to now been thought to be domain-specific for language processing. To what extent this network might also be activated by the processing of non-linguistic information has remained unknown. The present fMRI-data reveal that the human brain employs this neuronal network also for the processing of musical information, suggesting that the cortical network known to support language processing is less domain-specific than previously believed

Imagining the Trans Symphony: Integrating Transgender Composer Identity in Music Analysis

Contemporary music analysts have generally downplayed the relevance of composer intent, a dismissal which ignores the potential for an enhanced expressive context afforded by composers\u27 own assessments and also contributes to the silencing of already othered voices, such as in the case of queer and trans composers. Allowing the trans composer a voice in the reading of their work affirms the integral part of the trans experience that is self-determination. Over time, this project to tell trans stories evolved into a series of vignette-like analyses of trans composers’ works in which I use a methodology that incorporates the voices of living composers while building on and modifying the work of music theorists and queer theorists, and moving queer musicology towards a new trans musicology that includes non-binary genders. This thesis demonstrates my theoretical framework using interviews of six transgender composers to supplement my analyses of their works. By analyzing the work with the added context of the composer’s statements about their own music, my analyses paint more nuanced and complete pictures of the work that reinvest music analysis with the trans voice behind the composition

Music Smashed to Pieces: The Destructive Logic of Berlioz's Romeo au tombeau

Berlioz's Romeo au tombeau des Capulets, the sixth movement of his symphony Romeo et Juliette, is arguably his most controversial programmatic work and one of the most baffling pieces of program music in the repertoire. When the symphony premiered in 1839, Berlioz's instrumental setting of the tomb scene from Shakespeare's play (with David Garrick's ending, in which Juliet wakes before Romeo dies) was criticized for being incoherent because it had no conventional formal scheme, used avant-garde musical language, and boasted drastic shifts in style and mood. It was also criticized for being too literal because of its blatant musical depictions of dramatic acts, including Romeo's drink from the vial of poison and Juliet's suicidal stab. Jules Maurel called the piece a "mistake" and argued that one would need "a stage, scenery, tombs, theatrical half-light, and people speaking and acting" to understand it (Maurel 1839).Modern listeners have been kinder than Berlioz's contemporaries. Scholars today tend to agree that Romeo au tombeau is not a "mistake" but a meaningful, if difficult, work that deserves to be taken seriously, but there is no consensus about how to make sense of it

Music as an educative enrichment medium for the remediation of children with reading problems

Bibliography: leaves 168-172.The primary focus of this dissertation was work with a group of children who were experiencing problems in reading and to formulate strategies which incorporates an innovative approach using music. Many learning problems encountered today could be avoided if children's earliest backgrounds were rich in songs, poems set to music, nursery rhymes and musical games. It is necessary for a child to experience rhythm in every possible way to enable him to read with a flowing rhythm and a pleasant intonation. A child must be able to feel and experience the rhythm of the spoken word by repeating rhymes, phrases, chanting children's names, for example. This is done by tapping the word, using body movements (clapping, stamping) and transferring this rhythm to percussion instruments while experiencing the speech rhythm. Many approaches have been used with children who are disabled readers and none use music as a tool. The progress of these children has therefore been slow, tedious and not always successful. Music has not been used before as an approach to assist children with reading disabilities. In this dissertation it has been proved that music helps children overcome their reading problems, as it is the only approach which offers total involvement of the child and therefore the best results are achieved. All children involved in the research enjoyed the activities and derived great pleasure from performing them unaware that the process of remediation was taking place