03.07 - Jordan Smith's Master's thesis

The final version of lab member Jordan Smith's Master's thesis, completed at McGill University under Prof. Ichiro Fujinaga, has this past month been submitted and approved. It describes a MIREX-like evaluation (i.e., a benchmark evaluation) of music structure analysis algorithms. A direct download link is here: PDF.

Others working on music structure analysis may be interested in downloading the evaluation data, all of which are public and downloadable at Jordan's website. The thesis also introduces a modest new data set for structure analysis that consists entirely of public domain recordings, so anyone can download and share it.

Jordan continues to work on music structure-related research both at MuCoaCo (he and Isaac Schankler recently submitted an article to MCM on the structure of improvisations performed with Mimi) and back at McGill, through the SALAMI project which has created a large new database of structural analyses.

03.05 - Preview of Musical Patois at FAST: live webcast

The preview of Musical Patois takes place at the MIT150 Festival of Arts, Science, and Technology as part of FAST Thinking. The event is webcast live at: www.media.mit.edu/events/webcast/fast.html. A slide show of the Mar 5 FAST-Thinking events can be found at: http://arts.mit.edu/fast/fast-thinking-events

02.04 - Ussachevsky Memorial Festival @ Pomona

Isaac Schankler performs with Mimi (Multimodal Interaction for Musical Improvisation) at the Ussachevsky Memorial Electronic Music Festival at Pomona College organized by Tom Flaherty.  Details below:

Friday, February 4, 2011 - 8:00pm
Lyman Hall, Thatcher Music Building, Claremont, CA
FREE admission

Isaac Schankler's performance with Mimi has been posted on VIMEO:


Other concert performers include:
Robots, Rachel Rudich*, flute; Cynthia R. Fogg, viola; Roger Lebow*, cello; Mojave Trio: Sara Parkins, violin; Maggie Parkins, cello; Genevieve Feiwen Lee*, piano; Joti Rockwell*, electric guitar; Tony Perman, kalimba
 
Electronic and acoustic music by MaryClare Brzytwa, Karlheinz Essl, Tom Flaherty*, Matthew Malsky, Frank Zappa, and more

01.23-28 - Dagstuhl Seminar on Multimodal Music Processing

Elaine Chew and Alexandre François participate in a Dagstuhl Seminar on Multimodal Music Processing organized by Simon Dixon, Masataka Goto, and Meinard Mueller. The participants give introductory presentations, and broke out in special topics discussion sessions.  Cynthia Liem (University of Delft) and Elaine Chew perform Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 (transcribed for piano four hands by Scharwenka) at the concert on the final evening.

More photos by Jeremy Pickens can be found here.

01.14 - Frequency Visualizer with Ondar at CalTech TEDx Event

Alexandre François created a program to perform real-time frequency visualization of vocal sounds by Ondar, the famed Tuvan throat singer.  As many as four to five major peaks are seen when Ondar does his throat singing.  The presentation was part of the fringe TEDx events in honor of Feynman at Caltech today, together with performances by Ondar's eclectic band.

01.11 - Structure in Music

This year's ISE 575 / EE 675 / CSCI 575 class — Topics in Engineering Approaches to Music Cognition — met for the first time today.  The topic this year is Structure in Music.  The class website is at http://www-scf.usc.edu/~ise575/e .

01.06 - AMS Math Music Special Sessions

Elaine Chew attends and presents a paper on The Pentahelix: a Four-Dimensional Realization of the Spiral Array at the Special Sessions on Mathematical Techniques in Musical Analysis organized by Robert Peck and Thomas Fiore at the AMS Joint Mathematics Meeting in New Orleans.

Photos below show the Mississippi shoreline, and pictures to the left are of the dinner after the two sessions.