A Presence- and Performance-Driven Framework to Investigate Interactive Networked Music Learning Scenarios

Cooperative music making in networked environments has been subject of extensive research, scientific and artistic. Networked music performance (NMP) is attracting renewed interest thanks to the growing availability of effective technology and tools for computer-based communications, especially in the area of distance and blended learning applications. We propose a conceptual framework for NMP research and design in the context of classical chamber music practice and learning: presence-related constructs and objective quality metrics are used to problematize and systematize the many factors affecting the experience of studying and practicing music in a networked environment. To this end, a preliminary NMP experiment on the effect of latency on chamber music duos experience and quality of the performance is introduced. The degree of involvement, perceived coherence, and immersion of the NMP environment are here combined with measures on the networked performance, including tempo trends and misalignments from the shared score. Early results on the impact of temporal factors on NMP musical interaction are outlined, and their methodological implications for the design of pedagogical applications are discussed

A Music Search Engine based on semantic text-based query

Search and retrieval of songs from a large music repository usually relies on added meta-information (e.g., title, artist or musical genre); or on specific descriptors (e.g. mood); or on categorical music descriptors; none of which can specify the desired intensity. In this work, we propose an early example of se- mantic text-based music search engine. The semantic description takes into account emotional and non-emotional musical aspects. The method also includes a query-by-similarity search approach performed using semantic cues. We model both concepts and musical content in dimensional spaces that are suitable for carrying intensity information on the descriptors. We process the semantic query with a Natural Language parser to capture only the relevant words and qualifiers. We rely on Bayesian Decision theory to model concepts and songs as probability distributions. The resulted ranked list of songs are produced through a posterior probability model. A prototype of the system has been proposed to 53 subjects for evaluation, with good ratings on performance, usefulness and potential

Beat tracking using recurrent neural network: A transfer learning approach

Deep learning networks have been successfully applied to solve a large number of tasks. The effectiveness of deep learning networks is limited by the amount and the variety of data used for the training. For this reason, deep-learning networks can be applied in scenarios where a huge amount of data are available. In music information retrieval, this is the case of popular genres due to the wider availability of annotated music pieces. Instead, to find sufficient and useful data is a hard task for non widespread genres, like, for instance, traditional and folk music. To address this issue, Transfer Learning has been proposed, i.e., to train a network using a large available dataset and then transfer the learned knowledge (the hierarchical representation) to another task. In this work, we propose an approach to apply transfer learning for beat tracking. We use a deep BLSTM-based RNN as the starting network trained on popular music, and we transfer it to track beats of Greek folk music. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of our approach, we collect a dataset of Greek folk music, and we manually annotate the pieces

Feature-Based Analysis of the Effects of Packet Delay on Networked Musical Interactions

Networked Music Performance (NMP) is a mediated interactional modality with a tremendous potential impact on professional and amateur musicians, as it enables real-time interaction from remote locations. One of the known limiting factors of distributed networked performances is the impact of the unavoidable packet delay and jitter introduced by IP networks, which make it difficult to keep a stable tempo during the performance. This paper investigates the tolerance of remotely interacting musicians towards adverse network conditions. We do so for various musical instruments and music genres as a function of rhythmic complexity and tempo. In order to conduct this analysis we implemented a testbed for psychoacoustic analysis emulating the behavior of a real IP network in terms of variable transmission delay and jitter, and we quantitatively evaluated the impact of such parameters on the trend of the tempo maintained during the performance and on the perceptual quality of the musical interaction

Population structure, demographic history, and selective processes: Contrasting evidences from mitochondrial and nuclear markers in the European spiny lobster Palinurus elephas (Fabricius, 1787)

The European spiny lobster Palinurus elephas (Fabricius, 1787) is an ecologically and economically important species inhabiting a wide geographic range that extends from the North-east Atlantic and Azores to the Eastern Mediterranean. We investigated the population structure and evolutionary history of this species by both mitochondrial and microsatellite markers. Ten population samples covering a large part of the species distribution range (three samples from the Atlantic Ocean and seven from the Mediterranean Sea) were analyzed for a portion of the mitochondrial control region and seven polymorphic microsatellite loci. Both markers rejected the hypothesis of panmixia identifying two differentiated gene pools. The control region clearly distinguished the Atlantic and Mediterranean populations in two genetically separated groups. Microsatellites, also revealed two groups roughly associated to the Atlantic–Mediterranean separation, however, the Azores sample did not conform to this geographic scheme. Discrepancy between mitochondrial and nuclear markers emerged also when reconstructing the history of the species. Neutrality tests of the mitochondrial sequences indicated a departure from mutation-drift equilibrium that, combined to the mismatch analysis, pointed toward a sudden population expansion in both Atlantic and Mediterranean gene pools. Unexpectedly, microsatellites did not identify any signal of population expansion neither in the Atlantic pool nor in the Mediterranean onePublicado