Predicting performance difficulty from piano sheet music images

Estimating the performance difficulty of a musical score is crucial in music education for adequately designing the learning curriculum of the students. Although the Music Information Retrieval community has recently shown interest in this task, existing approaches mainly use machine-readable scores, leaving the broader case of sheet music images unaddressed. Based on previous works involving sheet music images, we use a mid-level representation, bootleg score, describing notehead positions relative to staff lines coupled with a transformer model. This architecture is adapted to our task by introducing an encoding scheme that reduces the encoded sequence length to one-eighth of the original size. In terms of evaluation, we consider five datasets -- more than 7500 scores with up to 9 difficulty levels -- , two of them particularly compiled for this work. The results obtained when pretraining the scheme on the IMSLP corpus and fine-tuning it on the considered datasets prove the proposal's validity, achieving the best-performing model with a balanced accuracy of 40.34\% and a mean square error of 1.33. Finally, we provide access to our code, data, and models for transparency and reproducibility

Geochemistry of the surface and ground waters of the upper bassin of the river Llobregat

In this work the main geochemical characteristics of the surface and ground waters of the Upper basin of the River Llobregat are described and, discussed. The water samples analysed reveal sharply contrasting characteristics. In both the Fonts del Llobregat and River Bastareny catchments, calcium bicarbonated waters with a low mineral content clearly predominate. However, in the catchment of the River Arija, although the waters of the upper course and the main tributaries are also calcium bicarbonated, it is worth noting that at the confluence with the River Llobregat calcium sulphated water is found. The catchment of the River Saldes shows a greater heterogeneity, with calcium bicarbonated, sodium chloridized and calcium sulphated waters, and thus at the confluence with the River Llobregat the water is sodium-calcium bicarbonated-sulphated. Principal components analysis enables us to arrive at a synthesis which clearly explains these characteristics. These results are fundamentally interpreted on the basis of the lithologies drained by the different watercourses.[es] En el presente estudio se presentan y discuten las principales características geoquímicas de las aguas superficiales y subterráneas de la Alta cuenca del río Llobregat hasta la entrada del río al embalse de La Baells. El conjunto de aguas analizadas presentan características muy contrastadas. Así, tanto en la subcuenca de las fuentes del Llobregat como en la del río Bastareny predominan las aguas bicarbonatadas cálcicas poco mineralizadas. En la subcuenca del río Arija, sí bien las aguas del curso alto y las de los principales afluentes también son bicarbonatadas cálcicas, destaca el hecho de que en la confluencia con el río Llobregat el agua es sulfatada cálcica. La subcuenca del río Saldes es la que presenta una mayor heterogeneidad, con aguas bicarbonatadas cálcicas, cloruradas sódicas y sulfatadas cálcicas, las cuales provocan que en la confluencia con el río Llobregat el agua sea bicarbonatada-sulfatada sódico-cálcica. El análisis de componentes principales ha permitido sintetizar estas características de forma muy clara. Los resultados se interpretan, esencialmente, a partir de las litologías drenadas por los distintos cursos de agua. [fr] Cette étude présente et discute des principales caractéristiques géochimiques des eaux superficielles et souterraines du haut-bassin du fleuve Llobregat (le point le plus en aval considéré se situe juste avant l'entrée du cours d'eau dans le lac de La Baells). L'ensemble des eaux analysées présente des caractéristiques très contrastées. Dans les sous-bassins des sources du Llobregat et du Bastareny prédominent des eaux bicarbonatées calciques peu minéralisées. Dans les sousbassin de la rivière Arija, sur son cours supérieur ainsi que ses principaux affluents, les eaux sont également bicarbonatées calciques, exceptées celles de la confluence avec le Llobregat qui sont sulfatées calciques. Le sous-bassin de la rivière Saldes est celui qui présente la plus grande hétérogénéité, avec des eaux bicarbonatées calciques, chlorurées sadiques et sulfatées calciques. Ces dernières sont responsables du fait qu'à la confluence avec la Llobregat les eaux soient bicarbonato-sulfato sodico-calciques. L'analyse en composantes principales a permis de discriminer nettement ces caractéristiques. Ces résultats sont essentiellement expliqués à partir de la lithologie des différents bassins versants drainés

Radon measurement in karstic waters with Lucas cell technique

Based on Lucas cell technique, the portable device named “PRASSI” (SILENA mod. 5S) was used to realise discrete radon measurements in water samples. The calibration factor is (64.766.9) cpmQBq21 and, with the present set-up for measuring radon in water, the detection and the determination limits are, respectively, 0.007 and 0.020 Bq. Thus, the device is well adapted for determining low radon content in karstic waters. Several discrete radon samplings were performed nearly every week in the three main springs of the Bastareny karstic system (Catalonian Pyrenees, N-E Spain). Thus, it was possible to estimate the reproducibility of the methodology as well as to characterise every spring of the aquifer in relation to their hydrogeological features. With the portable radon monitor, some useful measurements were achieved to estimate radon loss due to degassing process over short distances, with important consequences for radon studies in karstic waters. Lastly, it was possible to perform intensive sampling during a flood and the results point out the great variability of radon levels, closely related to the flow rate trend. That permitted also an intercomparison with other radon probes installed previously in every spring, for continuous radon measurements

Predicting performance difficulty from piano sheet music images

This work has been accepted at the 24th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR 2023), at Milan, Italy. October 5-9, 2023.Estimating the performance difficulty of a musical score is crucial in music education for adequately designing the learning curriculum of the students. Although the Music Information Retrieval community has recently shown interest in this task, existing approaches mainly use machinereadable scores, leaving the broader case of sheet music images unaddressed. Based on previous works involving sheet music images, we use a mid-level representation, bootleg score, describing notehead positions relative to staff lines coupled with a transformer model. This architecture is adapted to our task by introducing an encoding scheme that reduces the encoded sequence length to oneeighth of the original size. In terms of evaluation, we consider five datasets—more than 7500 scores with up to 9 difficulty levels—, two of them particularly compiled for this work. The results obtained when pretraining the scheme on the IMSLP corpus and fine-tuning it on the considered datasets prove the proposal’s validity, achieving the bestperforming model with a balanced accuracy of 40.34% and a mean square error of 1.33. Finally, we provide access to our code, data, and models for transparency and reproducibility.This work is funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MCIU) and the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) within the Musical AI Project – PID2019-111403GBI00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Korea Government (MSIT) (NRF-2022R1F1A1074566)