Synchronizing Sequencing Software to a Live Drummer

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Human-Computer Music Performance: From Synchronized Accompaniment to Musical Partner

Live music performance with computers has motivated many research projects in science, engineering, and the arts. In spite of decades of work, it is surprising that there is not more technology for, and a better understanding of the computer as music performer. We review the development of techniques for live music performance and outline our efforts to establish a new direction, Human-Computer Music Performance (HCMP), as a framework for a variety of coordinated studies. Our work in this area spans performance analysis, synchronization techniques, and interactive performance systems. Our goal is to enable musicians to ncorporate computers into performances easily and effectively through a better understanding of requirements, new techniques, and practical, performance-worthy implementations. We conclude with directions for future work

Active Scores: Representation and Synchronization in Human-Computer Performance of Popular Music

Computers have the potential to significantly extend the practice of popular music based on steady tempo and mostly determined form. There are significant challenges to overcome, however, due to constraints including accurate timing based on beats and adherence to a form or structure despite possible changes that may occur, possibly even during performance. We describe an approach to synchronization across media that takes into account latency due to communication delays and audio buffering. We also address the problem of mapping from a conventional score with repeats and other structures to an actual performance, which can involve both “flattening” the score and rearranging it, as is common in popular music. Finally, we illustrate the possibilities of the score as a bidirectional user interface in a real-time system for music performance, allowing the user to direct the computer through a digitally displayed score, and allowing the computer to indicate score position back to human performers

Active Scores: Representation and Synchronization in Human-Computer Performance of Popular Music

Computers have the potential to significantly extend the practice of popular music based on steady tempo and mostly determined form. There are significant challenges to overcome, however, due to constraints including accurate timing based on beats and adherence to a form or structure despite possible changes that may occur, possibly even during performance. We describe an approach to synchronization across media that takes into account latency due to communication delays and audio buffering. We also address the problem of mapping from a conventional score with repeats and other structures to an actual performance, which can involve both “flattening” the score and rearranging it, as is common in popular music. Finally, we illustrate the possibilities of the score as a bidirectional user interface in a real-time system for music performance, allowing the user to direct the computer through a digitally displayed score, and allowing the computer to indicate score position back to human performers

The Presence of Groove in Online Songwriting Projects

Collaboration for groups with members who are disconnected by geography or time is convenient for many reasons, but remains a challenge due to time zone differences, network congestion, and the attenuation of nonverbal communication cues. Virtual collaborators engaging in creative work often deal with these challenges, even more so when tasked with expressing their emotions to distant partners. This study seeks to determine the social factors and tools that impact the quality of an online creative collaboration. Members of the Kompoz.com music composition community were surveyed to solicit projects that had the potential to be optimal collaborations. Judges listened to these songs and measured how much each song prompted them to move. This measure, called groove, was used as an indication of a successful collaboration. Judges assisted in selecting one case that was an exemplar of groove, and another that urged them to move much less, to stand as an exemplar of diminished groove. The comparative case method was used to compare and contrast the tools, social practices, and skills employed in each project, and offers guidelines for the design of and participation in online creative communities

"Knowing is Seeing:" The Digital Audio Workstation and the Visualization of Sound

The computers visual representation of sound has revolutionized the creation of music through the interface of the Digital Audio Workstation software (DAW). With the rise of DAW-based composition in popular music styles, many artists sole experience of musical creation is through the computer screen. I assert that the particular sonic visualizations of the DAW propagate certain assumptions about music, influencing aesthetics and adding new visually-based parameters to the creative process. I believe many of these new parameters are greatly indebted to the visual structures, interactional dictates and standardizations (such as the office metaphor depicted by operating systems such as Apples OS and Microsofts Windows) of the Graphical User Interface (GUI). Whether manipulating text, video or audio, a users interaction with the GUI is usually structured in the same mannerclicking on windows, icons and menus with a mouse-driven cursor. Focussing on the dialogs from the Reddit communities of Making hip-hop and EDM production, DAW user manuals, as well as interface design guidebooks, this dissertation will address the ways these visualizations and methods of working affect the workflow, composition style and musical conceptions of DAW-based producers

Locating project studios and studio projects

Via a longitudinal case study of a studio project (Middlewood Sessions, 2004–12), this research explores processes of music-making in the increasingly prevalent context of the project studio to give an insight into contemporary music-making practices. Predicated upon technologies of decreasing size but increasing processing power, project studios represent a diversification of musical creativity in terms of the persons and locations of music production. Increasingly mobile technologies lead to increasingly mobile practices of music production, which presents a challenge to the seemingly simple question: where is the project studio? In response, I propose an ontology of project-studio music-making that sets out what conditions have to be met for location, as an active proposition, to take place

The Use of Virtual Instruments by Australian Screen Composers

Recent technological advancements, strong competition and targeted marketing strategies by virtual instrument merchants have established virtual instruments and digital instrument samples as essential components of a professional screen composer's toolset. The democratisation of these powerful tools has led to broad accessibility to virtual instruments and the digital sequencing software required to run them. Virtual instruments are portable, powerful, and affordable––they are no longer the exclusive domain of expensive recording studios. This thesis aims to quantify and qualify the parameters surrounding screen music composition in this digital age and introduce to the literature new empirical data together with the experiences of working screen music professionals. This is achieved by following a mixed methods sequential exploratory methodology starting with a survey of Australian screen composers (n=102) where they are asked to answer questions with a recent cue in mind. Informed by the results of the survey, semistructured interviews were conducted and recorded with working Australian screen composers (n=22). When combined the meta-inferences confirm that virtual instruments are vital for Australian screen composers to do their job, especially now that their tools are democratised. Screen composers are able to swiftly create cues that are finished products and not demos for their director and film-team. These changes have also shaped a new paradigm of film and television directors to expect final and completed versions of cues from Australian screen composers and not working drafts

New expressive percussion instruments

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2002.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-86).This thesis presents several new percussion instruments that explore the ideas of musical networks; playing, recording, and developing musical material; continuous control over rhythm and timbre; pressure sensing; and electronic / acoustic hybrids. These instruments use the tools of electronics and computation to extend the role of percussion by creating new ways for people to play percussion alone, together, and in remote locations. Two projects are presented in detail. The Beatbugs are a system of eight hand-held networked instruments that are designed to let children enter simple rhythmic motifs and send those motifs to be developed further by the other players. Results from three workshops and performances are discussed. Preliminary results are also presented for the Remote Drum Network, a system that lets people play drums together over the internet even in high latency situations by synchronizing their audio streams and delaying them to match each player's next phrase.by Roberto Mario Aimi.S.M