Korean Heritage as a Foundation for Composition

This dissertation provides the conceptual and aesthetic background of the compositions composed throughout the course of my doctoral studies. I will introduce Korean philosophies and aesthetics and then expand upon these elements to demonstrate how they have influenced my approach to music composition. Furthermore, I will demonstrate how I intertwine the use of colour and Korean philosophies. Chapter 1 delineates the elements of Korean philosophies and aesthetics that have influenced my musical language. The chapter focuses on how the Korean handcraft art Jogakbo and the Korean philosophies of Yin-Yang, Ohang and Meak are related to each other. Additionally, I examine the origin and structure of Jogakbo, with a particular focus upon the key variables of shape and colour. The examination of Jogakbo causes me to establish how form and structure are linked in Jogakbo, and then how I apply this form and structure to my composition. Furthermore, I will describe how the aesthetics of Yin-yang, Ohang and Jogakbo form the core of my musical language by examining the function and unplanned approach to the different coloured scraps of material in Jogakbo. Drawing upon this examination, I describe how I have taken the colours from these scraps to form the colours in my music. In relation to this, I investigate the musical techniques of spectral composers, with an emphasis on musical colour, looking at specific composers’ techniques and establishing how they have influenced my own compositional techniques. Finally, I will discuss the role of the philosophy of Maek generating linearity on the horizontal structure of music. Chapter 2 discusses individual portfolio pieces composed throughout the doctoral course chronologically. I will demonstrate how selected Korean philosophies, aesthetics, and the techniques of Jogakbo have gradually evolved to play a larger role in the composition of my pieces. In particular, the colours used in Jogakbo and the philosophy of Ohang play a more direct role in creating the structure and form of the pieces composed in late course. In the conclusion, the research throughout my doctoral course has been summarised, and limitations and other challenges reached while applying the research to my compositional process are examined. Finally, the conclusion ends with a discussion of potential directions to further this research

How singers adapt to room acoustical conditions

Previous studies on adaptation of performers to room acoustic conditions mostly focused on musicians. The present study deals with the strategies used by singers, whose musical instrument is inherently part of themselves, inducing a specific perception of the sound they produce. To overcome the variations of the acoustical characteristics of the rooms where they perform, singers tend to vary their sound production (e.g. sound intensity, spectral balance, tempo, articulation). To which extend do singers change their sound production when singing in different rooms? The methodology involves 7 rooms with different acoustical characteristics in which 4 singers performed 3 excerpts a capella of musical pieces. In each place, they were recorded by means of nearfield microphone capturing only the singing voice, i.e. without reverberation from the room. Omnidirectional and binaural room acoustic measurements were also performed on stage. Room acoustical parameters are derived from the measured impulse responses and musical descriptors are extracted from each note of the singing recordings, allowing to quantify the musical performances. The degree of correlation between singing and room acoustics is further considered, revealing both common and specific strategies used by the singers

Pitch-Informed Solo and Accompaniment Separation

Das Thema dieser Dissertation ist die Entwicklung eines Systems zur Tonhöhen-informierten Quellentrennung von Musiksignalen in Soloinstrument und Begleitung. Dieses ist geeignet, die dominanten Instrumente aus einem Musikstück zu isolieren, unabhängig von der Art des Instruments, der Begleitung und Stilrichtung. Dabei werden nur einstimmige Melodieinstrumente in Betracht gezogen. Die Musikaufnahmen liegen monaural vor, es kann also keine zusätzliche Information aus der Verteilung der Instrumente im Stereo-Panorama gewonnen werden. Die entwickelte Methode nutzt Tonhöhen-Information als Basis für eine sinusoidale Modellierung der spektralen Eigenschaften des Soloinstruments aus dem Musikmischsignal. Anstatt die spektralen Informationen pro Frame zu bestimmen, werden in der vorgeschlagenen Methode Tonobjekte für die Separation genutzt. Tonobjekt-basierte Verarbeitung ermöglicht es, zusätzlich die Notenanfänge zu verfeinern, transiente Artefakte zu reduzieren, gemeinsame Amplitudenmodulation (Common Amplitude Modulation CAM) einzubeziehen und besser nichtharmonische Elemente der Töne abzuschätzen. Der vorgestellte Algorithmus zur Quellentrennung von Soloinstrument und Begleitung ermöglicht eine Echtzeitverarbeitung und ist somit relevant für den praktischen Einsatz. Ein Experiment zur besseren Modellierung der Zusammenhänge zwischen Magnitude, Phase und Feinfrequenz von isolierten Instrumententönen wurde durchgeführt. Als Ergebnis konnte die Kontinuität der zeitlichen Einhüllenden, die Inharmonizität bestimmter Musikinstrumente und die Auswertung des Phasenfortschritts für die vorgestellte Methode ausgenutzt werden. Zusätzlich wurde ein Algorithmus für die Quellentrennung in perkussive und harmonische Signalanteile auf Basis des Phasenfortschritts entwickelt. Dieser erreicht ein verbesserte perzeptuelle Qualität der harmonischen und perkussiven Signale gegenüber vergleichbaren Methoden nach dem Stand der Technik. Die vorgestellte Methode zur Klangquellentrennung in Soloinstrument und Begleitung wurde zu den Evaluationskampagnen SiSEC 2011 und SiSEC 2013 eingereicht. Dort konnten vergleichbare Ergebnisse im Hinblick auf perzeptuelle Bewertungsmaße erzielt werden. Die Qualität eines Referenzalgorithmus im Hinblick auf den in dieser Dissertation beschriebenen Instrumentaldatensatz übertroffen werden. Als ein Anwendungsszenario für die Klangquellentrennung in Solo und Begleitung wurde ein Hörtest durchgeführt, der die Qualitätsanforderungen an Quellentrennung im Kontext von Musiklernsoftware bewerten sollte. Die Ergebnisse dieses Hörtests zeigen, dass die Solo- und Begleitspur gemäß unterschiedlicher Qualitätskriterien getrennt werden sollten. Die Musiklernsoftware Songs2See integriert die vorgestellte Klangquellentrennung bereits in einer kommerziell erhältlichen Anwendung.This thesis addresses the development of a system for pitch-informed solo and accompaniment separation capable of separating main instruments from music accompaniment regardless of the musical genre of the track, or type of music accompaniment. For the solo instrument, only pitched monophonic instruments were considered in a single-channel scenario where no panning or spatial location information is available. In the proposed method, pitch information is used as an initial stage of a sinusoidal modeling approach that attempts to estimate the spectral information of the solo instrument from a given audio mixture. Instead of estimating the solo instrument on a frame by frame basis, the proposed method gathers information of tone objects to perform separation. Tone-based processing allowed the inclusion of novel processing stages for attack refinement, transient interference reduction, common amplitude modulation (CAM) of tone objects, and for better estimation of non-harmonic elements that can occur in musical instrument tones. The proposed solo and accompaniment algorithm is an efficient method suitable for real-world applications. A study was conducted to better model magnitude, frequency, and phase of isolated musical instrument tones. As a result of this study, temporal envelope smoothness, inharmonicty of musical instruments, and phase expectation were exploited in the proposed separation method. Additionally, an algorithm for harmonic/percussive separation based on phase expectation was proposed. The algorithm shows improved perceptual quality with respect to state-of-the-art methods for harmonic/percussive separation. The proposed solo and accompaniment method obtained perceptual quality scores comparable to other state-of-the-art algorithms under the SiSEC 2011 and SiSEC 2013 campaigns, and outperformed the comparison algorithm on the instrumental dataset described in this thesis.As a use-case of solo and accompaniment separation, a listening test procedure was conducted to assess separation quality requirements in the context of music education. Results from the listening test showed that solo and accompaniment tracks should be optimized differently to suit quality requirements of music education. The Songs2See application was presented as commercial music learning software which includes the proposed solo and accompaniment separation method

Map, Trigger, Score, Procedure: machine-listening paradigms in live-electronics

Since the advent of real-time computer music environments, composers have increasingly incorporated DSP analysis, synthesis, and processing algorithms in their creative practices. Those processes became part of interactive systems that use real-time computational tools in musical compositions that explore diverse techniques to generate, spatialize, and process instrumental/vocal sounds. Parallel to the development of these tools and the expansion of DSP methods, new techniques focused on sound/musical information extraction became part of the tools available for music composition. In this context, this article discusses the creative use of Machine Listening and Musical Information Retrieval techniques applied in the composition of live-electronics works. By pointing out some practical applications and creative approaches, we aim to circumscribe, in a general way, the strategies for employing Machine Listening and Music Information Retrieval techniques observed in a set of live-electronics pieces, categorizing four compositional approaches, namely: mapping, triggering, scoring, and procedural paradigms of application of machine listening techniques in the context of live-electronics music compositions

User serviceable parts: Practice, technology, sociality and method in live electronic musicking

In live electronic musical research there is a need to confront the interrelationships between the social and the technological in order to understand our music as practice. These interrelationships form a complex and dynamic ecosystem that not only forms the context to, but is constitutive of practice. I interrogate from a variety of perspectives the musical practice that has formed over the course of this research in order to reveal the dispositions towards technology, the social situatedness and the musical approach that underlies my work. By taking a disposition towards musical practice-led research that is non-hierarchical, performative, ecological, phenomenological and pragmatic, I place into wider context compositional and technological decisions, in terms of their relationships to improvising, skill, design, performance and research. This work contributes both new theories of live electronic musical practice and new suggestions for practice-led methods aimed at investigating the interplay of social and material factors in musicking, and at interrogating the disciplinary status of our field vis-a-vis musical and technical disciplines

Gaussian Framework for Interference Reduction in Live Recordings

Here typical live full-length music recordings are considered. In this scenarios, some instrumental voices are captured by microphones intended to other voices, leading to so-called “interferences”. Reducing this phenomenon is desirable because it opens new possibilities for sound engineers and also it has been proven that it increase performances of music analysis and processing tools (e.g. pitch tracking). In this work we propose an fast NMF-based algorithm to solve this problem.ope

Composer and performer roles in contemporary music: an autoethnographic study

In 20th and 21st century contemporary classical music the instrumentalist has played a vital role in developing the art form. However, the input of the performer into the preparation of new works is not one which has been clearly documented. This project is a practice-led approach that articulates the contribution of the contemporary music performer in more detail. As an entry point into an autoethnographic project, I will discuss two case-studies (émoi by Evan Johnson and luminous by Kristian Ireland) as examples of my practice with contemporary music scores, and in response to these, compose my own compositions. The written thesis is contextualised by a CD of contemporary repertoire for solo flute (VALE) and recordings of two of my own compositions, as well as supporting recordings and score examples. From a methodological perspective, this project seeks to articulate the concepts and practices that lie behind my work with a contemporary score, leading to a reassessment of the performer, composer and score paradigm