Investigating representation of tablature data for NLP music prediction

In this thesis, the ability of CharRNN models learning to compose guitar music using varying representations of guitar tablature is explored. I utilize a well-versed sequential model of LSTM cells, and investigate the ability of said model to input, and predict both character to character, and sequence to sequence, following the principles of natural language processing and music information retrieval. The study was conducted on datasets consisting of data naïvely retrieved from a subset of classical guitar tablature. With regards to tablature structure, the experiments uncover a clearly superior form for character to character prediction, producing a model capable of composing seemingly musically coherent phrases. The work is not fully able to compare the character predictor with the sequence predictor and further details how this could potentially be alleviated

The Sistrum – and How to Make One

This article explains how a practical sistrum may be made - and one with sufficient volume and appropriate brightness to be of use within the context of Western orchestral music written during the nineteenth-century and onwards

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

Becoming Chinese music: guqin and music scholarship in modern China.

Chuen Fung Wong.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-102).Abstracts in English and Chinese.Abstract --- p.iAbstract (Chinese Translation) --- p.iiiAcknowledgements --- p.vTable of Contents --- p.viList of Figures and Tables --- p.viiiRomanization and Translation --- p.ixChapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1Beyond Ethnomusicology and Music History --- p.1Music Scholarship and Historiography in Modern China --- p.3Modern Research on Guqin: Becoming a Chinese Instrument --- p.8On Methodology --- p.11Chapter 2. --- The Making of Modern Notation: Reformation Models of Guqin Notation in the Twentieth Century --- p.14Introduction --- p.14Guqin Notation --- p.16Traditional Notation/Pre-Modern: An Imagined Tradition --- p.18Modern Changes --- p.20Notation Model in Oinxue Rumen --- p.21Notation Model in Qinjing --- p.23Wang Guangqi's Model --- p.25Yang Tinliu's Reformation Proposal --- p.28Gong Yi´ةs Guqin Yamoufa --- p.31Concluding Remarks: The Making of a Modern Notation --- p.35Chapter 3. --- Between Creativity and Reconstruction: Dapu and Its Changing Concept --- p.38Introduction --- p.38Defining Dapu --- p.40"Between Ancient and Modern, Historical and Creative" --- p.41The Power of Silk String --- p.46Dapu in Modern China and Its Practical Uses --- p.48Concluding Remarks: Dapu and Modernity in China --- p.51"Epilogue: A Brief Report on the Fourth National Dapu Conference,19-26 August 2001, Changshu" --- p.56Chapter 4. --- Becoming a Chinese Music history: Guqin and Music Historiography --- p.60Introduction --- p.60Music Historiography and the Work-Concept in China --- p.63Guqin and Musical Works --- p.66Situating Guqin Music into History: The Irony of Meihua Sannong --- p.68The Tactics of Historicization: The Case of Lisao --- p.72Werktreue and Chinese Music Historiography: A Conceptual Imperialism --- p.76Chapter 5. --- Conclusion: Guqin and Postcolonial Modernity in China --- p.80Introduction --- p.80A Postcolonial Reading --- p.82The Quest for Modernity --- p.83Final Remarks: On Translation and Chinese Music Scholarship --- p.86Appendix A Chinese Dynasties and Historical Periods --- p.88"Appendix B Map of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan" --- p.89Appendix C General Histories of Chinese Music --- p.90Reference Cited --- p.94Glossary of Chinese Terms --- p.10

Instruments as Technology and Culture: Co-constructing the Pedal Steel Guitar

Through a case study of the pedal steel guitar, an instrument that emerged in the mid-twentieth century United States, this dissertation theorizes instruments as technological objects that exist within constantly evolving, mutually influential relationships among instrument makers, players, and listeners. Placing the instrument at center, I investigate how the refinement of the pedal steel's mechanisms and techniques have both responded to and shaped the aesthetic and commercial priorities of country and other popular music since the 1950s. I also show the relationship between individual musicians and their instruments to illuminate the intersections of technology, culture, and human agency. My analysis of the pedal steel guitar illustrates that instruments are co-constructed objects, not only embodying the ideas of makers and musicians, but also influencing their use through the cultural knowledge embedded in their design. In doing so, I offer new means to account for the role of musical technologies in performance practice and genre formation, and new insight into the impact of instruments on the embodied experience of individual musicians. Beyond its applications to the study of music, my analysis of instruments reveals how individual users embrace, reject, manipulate, and reinterpret the function and significance of technology, and thus negotiate their own places in the collective of society.Doctor of Philosoph

Embodied interaction with guitars: instruments, embodied practices and ecologies

In this thesis I investigate the embodied performance preparation practices of guitarists to design and develop tools to support them. To do so, I employ a series of human-centred design methodologies such as design ethnography, participatory design, and soma design. The initial ethnographic study I conducted involved observing guitarists preparing to perform individually and with their bands in their habitual places of practice. I also interviewed these musicians on their preparation activities. Findings of this study allowed me to chart an ecology of tools and resources employed in the process, as well as pinpoint a series of design opportunities for augmenting guitars, namely supporting (1) encumbered interactions, (2) contextual interactions, and (3) connected interactions. Going forward with the design process I focused on remediating encumbered interactions that emerge during performance preparation with multimedia devices, particularly during instrumental transcription. I then prepared and ran a series of hands-on co-design workshops with guitarists to discuss five media controller prototypes, namely, instrument-mounted controls, pedal-based controls, voice-based controls, gesture-based controls, and “music-based” controls. This study highlighted the value that guitarists give to their guitars and to their existing practice spaces, tools, and resources by critically reflecting on how these interaction modalities would support or disturb their existing embodied preparation practices with the instrument. In parallel with this study, I had the opportunity to participate in a soma design workshop (and then prepare my own) in which I harnessed my first-person perspective of guitar playing to guide the design process. By exploring a series of embodied ideation and somatic methods, as well as materials and sensors across several points of contact between our bodies and the guitar, we collaboratively ideated a series of design concepts for guitar across both workshops, such as a series of breathing guitars, stretchy straps, and soft pedals. I then continued to develop and refine the Stretchy Strap concept into a guitar strap augmented with electronic textile stretch sensors to harness it as an embodied media controller to remediate encumbered interaction during musical transcription with guitar when using secondary multimedia resources. The device was subsequently evaluated by guitarists at a home practicing space, providing insights on nuanced aspects of its embodied use, such as how certain media control actions like play and pause are better supported by the bodily gestures enacted with the strap, whilst other actions, like rewinding the play back or setting in and out points for a loop are better supported by existing peripherals like keyboards and mice, as these activities do not necessarily happen in the flow of the embodied practice of musical transcription. Reflecting on the overall design process, a series of considerations are extracted for designing embodied interactions with guitars, namely, (1) considering the instrument and its potential for augmentation, i.e., considering the shape of the guitar, its material and its cultural identity, (2) considering the embodied practices with the instrument, i.e., the body and the subjective felt experience of the guitarist during their skilled embodied practices with the instrument and how these determine its expert use according to a particular instrumental tradition and/or musical practice, and (3) considering the practice ecology of the guitarist, i.e., the tools, resources, and spaces they use according to their practice

'Enter Ofelia playing on a lute, and her haire downe singing' - music in the performance of Shakespeare at the Globe, 1997-2005

This thesis is an examination of the subject of music in original practices productions of Shakespeare at the Globe from the viewpoint of practical musicianship in addition to textual analysis of the plays and examination of the wider place of music in Shakespeare’s society. The thesis elucidates the concepts of soundscape and aural narrative (the diegetic sounds and their signifying function). The use of the aural narrative developed during the Rylance years, rendering music not simply decorative, but a tool used increasingly to shape meaning and interpretation of character in performance. This thesis evaluates how the Globe team has used music within original practice productions, and if this is compatible with the principles of original practices laid down at the Globe’s conception

Embodied interaction with guitars: instruments, embodied practices and ecologies

In this thesis I investigate the embodied performance preparation practices of guitarists to design and develop tools to support them. To do so, I employ a series of human-centred design methodologies such as design ethnography, participatory design, and soma design. The initial ethnographic study I conducted involved observing guitarists preparing to perform individually and with their bands in their habitual places of practice. I also interviewed these musicians on their preparation activities. Findings of this study allowed me to chart an ecology of tools and resources employed in the process, as well as pinpoint a series of design opportunities for augmenting guitars, namely supporting (1) encumbered interactions, (2) contextual interactions, and (3) connected interactions. Going forward with the design process I focused on remediating encumbered interactions that emerge during performance preparation with multimedia devices, particularly during instrumental transcription. I then prepared and ran a series of hands-on co-design workshops with guitarists to discuss five media controller prototypes, namely, instrument-mounted controls, pedal-based controls, voice-based controls, gesture-based controls, and “music-based” controls. This study highlighted the value that guitarists give to their guitars and to their existing practice spaces, tools, and resources by critically reflecting on how these interaction modalities would support or disturb their existing embodied preparation practices with the instrument. In parallel with this study, I had the opportunity to participate in a soma design workshop (and then prepare my own) in which I harnessed my first-person perspective of guitar playing to guide the design process. By exploring a series of embodied ideation and somatic methods, as well as materials and sensors across several points of contact between our bodies and the guitar, we collaboratively ideated a series of design concepts for guitar across both workshops, such as a series of breathing guitars, stretchy straps, and soft pedals. I then continued to develop and refine the Stretchy Strap concept into a guitar strap augmented with electronic textile stretch sensors to harness it as an embodied media controller to remediate encumbered interaction during musical transcription with guitar when using secondary multimedia resources. The device was subsequently evaluated by guitarists at a home practicing space, providing insights on nuanced aspects of its embodied use, such as how certain media control actions like play and pause are better supported by the bodily gestures enacted with the strap, whilst other actions, like rewinding the play back or setting in and out points for a loop are better supported by existing peripherals like keyboards and mice, as these activities do not necessarily happen in the flow of the embodied practice of musical transcription. Reflecting on the overall design process, a series of considerations are extracted for designing embodied interactions with guitars, namely, (1) considering the instrument and its potential for augmentation, i.e., considering the shape of the guitar, its material and its cultural identity, (2) considering the embodied practices with the instrument, i.e., the body and the subjective felt experience of the guitarist during their skilled embodied practices with the instrument and how these determine its expert use according to a particular instrumental tradition and/or musical practice, and (3) considering the practice ecology of the guitarist, i.e., the tools, resources, and spaces they use according to their practice