A Step Toward AI Tools for Quality Control and Musicological Analysis of Digitized Analogue Recordings: Recognition of Audio Tape Equalizations

Historical analogue audio documents are indissolubly linked to their physical carriers on which they are recorded. Because of their short life expectancy these documents have to be digitized. During this process, the document may be altered with the result that the digital copy is not reliable from the authenticity point of view. This happens because digitization process is not completely automatized and sometimes it is influenced by human subjective choices. Artificial intelligence can help operators to avoid errors, enhancing reliability and accuracy, and becoming the base for quality control tools. Furthermore, this kind of algorithms could be part of new instruments aiming to ease and to enrich musicological studies. This work focuses the attention on the equalization recognition problem in the audio tape recording field. The results presented in this paper, highlight that, using machine learning algorithms, is possible to recognize the pre-emphasis equalization used to record an audio tape

A Conceptual Framework for Motion Based Music Applications

Imaginary projections are the core of the framework for motion based music applications presented in this paper. Their design depends on the space covered by the motion tracking device, but also on the musical feature involved in the application. They can be considered a very powerful tool because they allow not only to project in the virtual environment the image of a traditional acoustic instrument, but also to express any spatially defined abstract concept. The system pipeline starts from the musical content and, through a geometrical interpretation, arrives to its projection in the physical space. Three case studies involving different motion tracking devices and different musical concepts will be analyzed. The three examined applications have been programmed and already tested by the authors. They aim respectively at musical expressive interaction (Disembodied Voices), tonal music knowledge (Harmonic Walk) and XX century music composition (Hand Composer)

The \u201cHarmonic Walk\u201d and Enactive Knowledge: an Assessment Report

The Harmonic Walk is an interactive, physical environment based on user\u2019s motion detection and devoted to the study and practice of tonal harmony. When entering the rectangular floor surface within the application\u2019s camera view, a user can actually walk inside the musical structure, causing a sound feedback depending on the occupied zone. We arranged a two masks projection set up to allow users to experience melodic segmentation and tonality harmonic space, and we planned two phase assessment sessions, submitting a 22 high school student group to various test conditions. Our findings demonstrate the high learning effectiveness of the Harmonic Walk application. Its ability to transfer abstract concepts in an enactive way, produces important improvement rates both for subjects who received explicit information and for subjects who didn\u2019t

Stay True to the Sound of History: Philology, Phylogenetics and Information Engineering in Musicology

This work investigates computational musicology for the study of tape music works tackling the problems concerning stemmatics. These philological problems have been analyzed with an innovative approach considering the peculiarities of audio tape recordings. The paper presents a phylogenetic reconstruction strategy that relies on digitizing the analyzed tapes and then converting each audio track into a two-dimensional spectrogram. This conversion allows adopting a set of computer vision tools to align and equalize different tracks in order to infer the most likely transformation that converts one track into another. In the presented approach, the main editing techniques, intentional and unintentional alterations and different configurations of a tape recorded are estimated in phylogeny analysis. The proposed solution presents a satisfying robustness to the adoption of the wrong reading setup together with a good reconstruction accuracy of the phylogenetic tree. The reconstructed dependencies proved to be correct or plausible in 90% of the experimental cases

Is Vivaldi smooth and takete? Non-verbal sensory scales for describing music qualities

Studies on the perception of music qualities (such as induced or perceived emotions, performance styles, or timbre nuances) make a large use of verbal descriptors. Although many authors noted that particular music qualities can hardly be described by means of verbal labels, few studies have tried alternatives. This paper aims at exploring the use of non-verbal sensory scales, in order to represent different perceived qualities in Western classical music. Musically trained and untrained listeners were required to listen to six musical excerpts in major key and to evaluate them from a sensorial and semantic point of view (Experiment 1). The same design (Experiment 2) was conducted using musically trained and untrained listeners who were required to listen to six musical excerpts in minor key. The overall findings indicate that subjects\u2019 ratings on non-verbal sensory scales are consistent throughout and the results support the hypothesis that sensory scales can convey some specific sensations that cannot be described verbally, offering interesting insights to deepen our knowledge on the relationship between music and other sensorial experiences. Such research can foster interesting applications in the field of music information retrieval and timbre spaces explorations together with experiments applied to different musical cultures and contexts

Mozart is still blue: a comparison of sensory and verbal scales to describe qualities in music

An experiment was carried out in order to assess the use of non-verbal sensory scales for evaluating perceived music qualities, by comparing them with the analogous verbal scales. Participants were divided into two groups; one group (SV) completed a set of non-verbal scales responses and then a set of verbal scales responses to short musical extracts. A second group (VS) completed the experiment in the reverse order. Our hypothesis was that the ratings of the SV group can provide information unmediated (or less mediated) by verbal association in a much stronger way than the VS group. Factor analysis performed separately on the SV group, the VS group and for all participants shows a recurring patterning of the majority of sensory scales versus the verbal scales into different factors. Such results suggest that the sensory scale items are indicative of a different semantic structure than the verbal scales in describing music, and so they are indexing different qualities (perhaps ineffable), making them potentially special contributors to understanding musical experience

Computing Methodologies Supporting the Preservation of Electroacoustic Music from Analog Magnetic Tape

Electroacoustic music on analog magnetic tape is characterized by several specificities related to the carrier that have to be considered during the creation of a digital preservation copy of a document. The tape recorder need to be setup with the correct speed and equalization; moreover, the magnetic tape could present some intentional or unintentional alterations. During both the creation and the musicological analysis of a digital preservation copy, the quality of the work could be affected by human attention. This paper presents a methodology based on neural networks able to recognize and classify the alterations of a magnetic tape from the video of the tape itself flowing in the head of the tape recorder. Furthermore, some machine learning techniques has been tested to recognize equalization of a tape from its background noise. The encouraging results open the way to innovative tools able to unburden audio technicians and musicologists from repetitive tasks and improve the quality of their works

Installazioni interattive per la valorizzazione di strumenti musicali antichi: il flauto di Pan del Museo di Scienze Archeologiche e d\u2019Arte dell\u2019Universita\u300 degli Studi di Padova

Questo articolo descrive un progetto relativo all\u2019implementazione di un flauto di Pan virtuale all\u2019interno di una installazione museale che verr\ue0 esposta presso il Museo di Scienze Archeologiche e d\u2019Arte dell\u2019Universit\ue0 degli Studi di Padova. In primo luogo, l\u2019articolo introduce il problema della conservazione attiva e della valorizzazione degli strumenti in ambito museale. A seguire descrive l\u2019installazione multimediale progettata appositamente per valorizzare un antico flauto di Pan ritrovato in Egitto, negli anni Trenta, durante una campagna di scavi archeologici. Il reperto \ue8 stato sottoposto a svariate analisi, quali scansioni 3D e Tomografia Computerizzata, da cui sono state estratte le misure interne ed esterne del flauto. Queste sono state indispensabili per ricavare l\u2019intonazione delle canne e quindi creare il modello alla base del flauto virtuale. Infine, l\u2019articolo descrive in maniera approfondita le scelte progettuali, le modalit\ue0 di interazione e l\u2019implementazione delle due sezioni dell\u2019installazione dedicata al suono. L\u2019utente, infatti, pu\uf2 \u201csuonare\u201d il flauto utilizzando come input sia i comandi touch, sia il \u201csoffio\u201d

Archaeology and virtual acoustics. A pan flute from ancient Egypt

This paper presents the early developments of a recently started research project, aimed at studying from a multidisciplinary perspective an exceptionally well preserved ancient pan flute. A brief discussion of the history and iconography of pan flutes is provided, with a focus on Classical Greece. Then a set of non-invasive analyses are presented, which are based on 3D scanning andmaterials chemistry, and are the starting point to inspect the geometry, construction, age and geographical origin of the instrument. Based on the available measurements, a preliminary analysis of the instrument tuning is provided, which is also informed with elements of theory of ancient Greek music. Finally, the paper presents current work aimed at realizing an interactive museum installation that recreates a virtual flute and allows intuitive access to all these research facets

Analisi e morphing del contenuto espressivo di un'esecuzione musicale

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