Fiddle tunes from under the bed : extracting music from Carpenter’s recordings

Publisher PD

Agreement among human and annotated transcriptions of global songs

Cross-cultural musical analysis requires standardized symbolic representation of sounds such as score notation. However, transcription into notation is usually conducted manually by ear, which is time-consuming and subjective. Our aim is to evaluate the reliability of existing methods for transcribing songs from diverse societies. We had 3 experts independently transcribe a sample of 32 excerpts of traditional monophonic songs from around the world (half a cappella, half with instrumental accompaniment). 16 songs also had pre-existing transcriptions created by 3 different experts. We compared these human transcriptions against one another and against 10 automatic music transcription algorithms. We found that human transcriptions can be sufficiently reliable (~90% agreement, κ ~.7), but current automated methods are not (<60% agreement, κ <.4). No automated method clearly outperformed others, in contrast to our predictions. These results suggest that improving automated methods for cross-cultural music transcription is critical for diversifying MIR

Rethinking practitioner research in education: not transcribing but reflecting and some reflections on the nature of practitioner research (2nd iteration – Cambridge)

This paper is intended to provoke discussion regarding how different types of research, particularly practitioner research and arts-based research, can inform each other and develop their own rationale for collecting and analysing research data as well as for generating new knowledge. The authors have different backgrounds, one in practitioner research (James), one in arts-based research (Selena) and one in leadership research (Joelma). This paper explores the commonalities they have found, in terms of searching for alternative methodologies for themselves and for those they work with. In this paper, we question some of the dominant approaches to qualitative research, including those that are highly influenced by grounded theory and that typically include creating new data through interviews, then transcribing and coding interviews. The pressure on teachers to find concrete strategies rather than investigate perceptions is discussed in the final section. The paper makes a case for original contributions and alternative approaches towards educational research freed from methodological conventions. It is intended to provoke discussion regarding where the boundaries of innovation may lie in terms of producing research that can still be seen as valid and useful to the researcher and to others. It is one of two papers written concurrently and delivered at conferences just a month apart. The other paper focuses explicitly on the dissemination of research and is entitled: Torn Between Expectations and Imagination: Alternative Forms of Communicating Educational Research (a short discussion paper reflecting on a workshop) (Yuan & Underwood, 2015)