Computer Music

Orchestration is a problem that has been relatively unex- plored in computer music until recently. This is perhaps due to its com- plexity. This paper presents a survey of the field of computer-assisted orchestration. The span of such survey covers different orchestration sys- tems that were initiated by the spectral music movement and developed during the last 40 years in order to establish the current state-of-the-art. In this paper, we also introduce some of our current work-in-progress ideas, which work towards intelligent orchestration systems.

More than 500 pages, interactive examples, hundreds of patches, online support, theory and Pure Data glossary, test, reverse engineering exercises, analyses, completion and correction of patches, etc.

ISBN-13: 978-8899212216

Chapter I – Introduction to Sound Synthesis and Signal Processing
Chapter II – Additive Synthesis
Chapter III – Subtractive Synthesis
Chapter IV – Controls and LFO

This book is an overview of the theory and practice of Pure Data, with a glossary of terms and suggested tests that allow students to evaluate their progress. Comprehensive online support, running parallel to the explanations in the book, includes hundreds of sample patches, analyses, interactive sound-building exercises, and reverse engineering exercises. This book will provide a reader with skill and understanding in using Pure Data for sound design and musical composition.

In the field of computational creativity, the area of automatic
music generation deals with techniques that are able to automatically compose human-enjoyable music. Although investigations in the area started recently, numerous techniques based on artificial intelligence have been proposed. Some of them produce pleasant results, but none is able to effectively evolve the style of the musical pieces generated.

In this paper, we fill this gap by proposing an evolutionary memetic system that composes melodies, exploiting a society of virtual composers. An extensive validation, performed by using both quantitative and qualitative analyses, confirms that the system is able to evolve its compositional style over time.

Automatic music composition is a fascinating field within computational creativity. While different Artificial Intelligence techniques have been used for tackling this task, Planning an approach for solving complex combinatorial problems which can count on a large number of high-performance systems and an expressive language for describing problems has never been exploited.

In this paper, we propose two different techniques that rely on automated planning for generating musical structures. The structures are then filled from the bottom with “raw” musical materials, and turned into melodies. Music experts evaluated the  creative  output  of  the  system,  acknowledging  an  overall  human-enjoyable trait of the melodies produced, which showed a solid hierarchical structure and a strong musical directionality. The techniques proposed not only have high relevance for the musical domain, but also suggest unexplored ways of using planning for dealing with non-deterministic creative domains.

The paper introduces G3M, a framework that aims to outline
the musical genome through a memetic analysis of large musical databases. The generated knowledge provides meaningful information about the evolution of musical
structures, styles and compositional techniques over
time and space. Researchers interested in music and sociocultural
evolution can fruitfully use the proposed system
to perform extensive inter-opus analysis of musical works
as well as to understand the evolution occurring within the
musical domain.

Music composition is a highly interdisciplinary process.To understand it deeply, a number of approaches have been used from different fields, such as musicology, music theory, music cognition and philosophy.    During  recent  decades,  numerous  techniques  based  on Artificial  Intelligence  (AI)  have  been  proposed.  In  particular,  many AI  systems  focus  on  automatic  melodic  composition.    Most  of  these systems  try  to  generate  melodies  enjoyable  by  a  human,  but  they completely ignore the way in which humans actually compose. Humans create  music  by  exploiting  a  mixed  top-down  bottom-up  approach,characterised by high-level cognition processes and rules.In  this  paper,  we  propose  a  memetic  model  for  music  composition,which  considers  both  psychological  and  social  levels.    The  former level  analyses  the  actual  cognitive  mechanisms  and  procedures  involved  while  composing  music:  namely,  museme  network,  compositional grammar and evaluation module. The social level puts the figure of the composer into perspective within her musical environment.  The introduced memetic model is encoded in a two-step algorithm.  Firstly,a  top-down  approach  is  used  for  defining  the  overall  structure  of  a melody.  Secondly,  the  given  structure  is  filled  with  musical  content,following a bottom-up strategy, that fosters emergent behaviour.  The proposed algorithm is the first system we are aware of which can evolve its own compositional style.  Stylistic change is achieved by modifying grammar rules and the museme network.  Finally, the paper provides an analysis of generated melodies.

Musicology is a small discipline within the wide spectrum of human knowledge, yet it is already divided into various branches, each with its own societies, conferences, journals, jargons, degrees, prejudices, …, and jobs. Although they share their object of investigation-"the art of music as a physical, psychological, aesthetic, and cultural phenomenon", these branches very often ignore one another. Research in musicology is mostly a solitary task, as investigations, papers, and publications are commonly signed by single authors, in contrast with STEM disciplines where teamwork is the rule. This is in part the result of tradition-the "Musicological Toolbox"-but also the aftermath of the job market and financing programs. Large funding schemes such as the European Research Council (ERC) grants are becoming a major disruptive factor in many disciplines in the humanities, including musicology. Scholars in all fields now have the opportunity to build research teams, and most of their members receive their salaries to exclusively work on the project. In other words, we are starting to build what could be called a Musicology Lab, learning along the way how teamwork is reshaping and transforming the Musicological Toolbox, the look and feel of our discipline, the way we work as well as the way we publish and disseminate our results. This paper presents some of the key features of the ERC Didone project, one of its principal tasks being to create a digitally encoded corpus of some 3,000 arias in MusicXML format from about 180 musical settings of a small number of opera librettos by Pietro Metastasio. It focuses on some of the project's research tasks, emphasizing how the skills of a team of eighteen scholars with very different expertise-historical musicology, music theory and analysis, cultural history, librettology, archival research, music performance, music engraving, MIR, computer science, and statistical modeling-combine to explore the potential answer(s) to the main research question of the project: How are emotions expressed through music?

This dissertation presents a new and expanded context for interactive music based on Moore’s model for computer music (Moore 1990) and contextualises its findings using Lesaffre’s taxonomy for musical feature extraction and analysis (Lesaffre et al. 2003). In doing so, the dissertation examines music as an expressive art-form where musically significant data is present not only in the audio signal but also in human gestures and in physiological data. The dissertation shows the model’s foundation in human perception of music as a performed art, and points to the relevance and feasibility of including expression and emotion as a high-level signal processing means for bridging man and machine. The resulting model is multi-level (physical, sensorial, perceptual, formal, expressive) and multi-modal (sound, human gesture, physiological) which makes it applicable to purely musical contexts, as well as intermodal contexts where music is combined with visual and/or physiological data.

The model implies evaluating an interactive music system as a musical instrument design. Several properties are examined during the course of the dissertation and models based on acoustic music instruments have been avoided due to the expanded feature set of interactive music system. A narrowing down of the properties is attempted in the dissertation’s conclusion together with a preliminary model circumscription. In particular it is pointed out that high-level features of real-time analysis, data storage and processing, and synthesis makes the system a musical instrument, and that the capability of real-time data storage and processing distinguishes the digital system as an unprecedented instrument, qualitatively different from all previous acoustic music instrument. It is considered that a digital system’s particular form of sound synthesis only qualifies it as being of a category parallel to the acoustic instruments categories.

The model is the result of the author’s experiences with practical work with interactive systems developed 2001-06 for a body of commissioned works. The systems and their underlying procedures were conceived and developed addressing needs inherent to the artistic ambitions of each work, and have all been thoroughly tested in many performances. The papers forming part of the dissertation describe the artistic and technological problems and their solutions. The solutions are readily expandable to similar problems in other contexts, and they all relate to general issues of their particular applicative area.

Bytebeat on tietokonemusiikin ja kokeellisen ohjelmoinnin muoto, jossa musiikkikappale toteutetaan muutamien kymmenien merkkien pituisena ohjelmointikielen lausekkeena. Artikkeli tarkastelee bytebeat-ilmiön vaiheita ja pyrkii luomaan sen kautta näkökulmaa siihen, kuinka tekninen kokeellisuus toimii demokulttuurissa.

A sound synthesis algorithm which simulates and extends the behaviour of the acoustic prepared piano is presented. The algorithm is based on a finite difference approximation to multiple stiff string vibration, including an excitation method (a hammer) as well as several connected preparation elements, modeled as lumped nonlinearities. Numerical issues and implementation details are discussed, and sound examples are presented..

In this paper we report on the synthesis of sounds using cellular
automata, specifically the multitype voter model. The mapping process adopted is based on digital signal processing analysis of automata evolutions and consists in mapping histograms onto spectrograms. The main problem of cellular automata is the difficulty of control and, consequently, sound synthesis
methods based on these computational models normally present a high factor of randomness in the output. We have achieved a significant degree of control as to predict the type of sounds that we can obtain. We are able to develop a flexible sound design process with emphasis on the possibility of controlling over time the spectrum complexity.

Altered states of consciousness (ASC) can be represented in video games through appropriate use of sound and computer graphics. Our research seeks to establish systematic methods for simulating ASC using computer sound and graphics, to improve the realism of ASC representations in video game engines. Quake Delirium is a prototype ‘ASC Simulation’ that we have created by modifying the video game Quake. Through automation of various graphical parameters that represent the conscious state of the game character, hallucinatory ASC are represented. While the initial version of Quake Delirium utilised a pre-determined automation path to produce these changes, we propose that immersion may be improved by providing the user with a ‘passive’ method of control, using a brain-computer interface (BCI). In this initial trial, we explore the use of a consumer-grade electroencephalograph (EEG) headset for this purpose. Keywords—Altered States of Consciousness; Video Games; Brain-Computer Interface ...

The focus of this thesis is on the signal processing techniques used to increase the au-dio quality of the most common digital audio effects employed in electronic musical instruments also taking into account the feasibility of the proposed algorithms’ implementation in accordance with the design constraints and the available computational limits. More in detail four different issues have been analyzed throughout this dissertation: artificial reverberation, analysis and emu-lation of nonlinear devices, audio morphing, and room response equalization.
Among the audio effects, one of the most used is definitely artificial reverberation. A great deal of research has been devoted in the last decades to improve the performance of digital artificial reverberators. Thanks to the progress of technology the traditional techniques based on recursive structures (i.e., IIR filters) are accompanied by new approaches based on fast convolution tech-niques and hybrid reverberator structures. On this basis, an efficient real-time implementation of a fast convolution algorithm has been proposed taking into account an embedded system. More-over, a technique for reducing the computational load required by this operation using psycho-acoustic expedients has been presented considering a joint assessment of the energy decay relief and the absolute threshold of hearing. Finally, some techniques for the approximation of the convolution operation with recursive structures at low computational cost have been suggested.
Although the convolution operation allows the exact reproduction of a linear system, it is im-portant to consider that most of the audio effects are nonlinear systems (i.e., compressors, distor-tion, amplifiers). For this reason, the most commonly used techniques for the emulation of non-linear systems based on a black box approach have been studied and analyzed. In particular, a technique for the approximation of the dynamic convolution operation by exploiting the princi-pal component analysis has been proposed. Using this procedure it is possible to reduce the cost of dynamic convolution without lowering the perceived audio quality. An adaptive algorithm for the identification of nonlinear systems using orthogonal functions has also been presented.
In order to provide greater flexibility and major artistic expression to musicians, several audio morphing techniques have been analyzed. In particular, this procedure makes possible to com-bine two or more audio signals in order to create new sounds that are acoustically interesting. This study has led to the development of an audio morphing algorithm for percussive hybrid sound generation. The main features of the presented approach are preprocessing of the audio references performed in the frequency domain and time domain linear interpolation to execute the morphing.
Finally, equalization techniques for improving the quality of sound reproduction systems by compensating the room transfer function have been taken into account. In particular, two algo-rithms for adaptive minimum-phase equalization and a mixed-phase equalization technique have been proposed. In order to verify the suitability of the proposed systems, experiments on a realis-tic scenario have been carried out.

The main object of this paper is the composition Seven Circles completed in 1959 by Danish composer Else Marie Pade. It is the first piece of purely electronic music composed in Denmark. The paper has three primary focuses which are first: the evolution of electronic music that leads up to Seven Circles, second: Pade and the production of the piece itself, and third: how the techniques used by Pade point out the way towards the electronic music we know today.

The Poeme Electronique in the Philips Pavilion at the World Fair of Brussels 1958 was a unique experience, the very first multimedia project to involve a sense of the total experience of vision and sound. Realized by three relevant personalities of contemporary culture, Le Corbusier (conception after Kalff, coordination and visual show), Varese (organized spatial sound delivered over 350 loudspeakers), Xenakis (architecture of the pavilion), the Poeme Electronique has never been repeated after the Philips Pavilion has been pulled down after the Expo. The Virtual Electronic Poem (VEP) project is reconstructing the lost artwork with virtual reality techniques. In this paper we consider the technical aspects of the reconstruction of the audio part of the Poeme by describing the investigations made on the piece and by connecting the Poeme to the whole Varesian production.

In this article a number of musical features are extracted from a large musical database and these were subsequently used to build four composer-classification models. The first two models, an if–then rule set and a decision tree, result in an understanding of stylistic differences between Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven. The other two models, a logistic regression model and a support vector machine classifier, are more accurate. The probability of a piece being composed by a certain composer given by the logistic regression model is integrated into the objective function of a previously developed variable neighborhood search algorithm that can generate counterpoint. The result is a system that can generate an endless stream of contrapuntal music with composer-specific characteristics that sounds pleasing to the ear. This system is implemented as an Android app called FuX.

The URL posted here links to general info, streamable audio files, downloadable .pdf file of the 24 page liner notes booklet for this album, which consists of some of the music I created at Bell Labs. during the 1970s on the GROOVE hybrid computer-controlled analog music system.

This paper introduces the WANDA Measurement tool (WAM) for forensic document examination. The WAM is an essential component of WANDA, a workbench that supports the user in the complete task flow of processing documents, measuring characteristic features in handwritten documents, and writer search. By using technologies like plug-ins. XML, and client/server modularity, a system was created that is easy to maintain. portable, and highly adaptable. Within WANDA, the WAM is the tool for interactively measuring handwriting features. The WAM was developed based on recommendations from a comparison study between two forensic writeridentification systems, Script and FISH. It incorporates nine measurements identical to those of FISH, and a new allograph measurement that is discussed in this paper. Furthermore, its intuitive new user-interface reduces the steep learning curve and streamlines the working process. A comparison of features previously measured by forensic experts using FISH, with...

Le développement du logiciel EAnalysis au sein du projet New multimedia tools for electroacoustic music analysis a duré trois années d’octobre 2010 à septembre 2013. Toutefois, l’idée d’un logiciel d’aide à l’analyse de la musique électroacoustique remonte au début des années 2000 durant l’écriture de notre thèse de doctorat. Nous souhaitions accompagner notre travail de recherche sur l’analyse et la représentation de la musique électroacoustique d’un logiciel permettant de faciliter le travail du musicologue. Ce premier projet n’a finalement pas été réalisé. Entre temps, nos activités pédagogiques nous ont amené à développer un autre logiciel pour l’aide à la présentation d’analyses d’œuvres instrumentales : iAnalyse. Celui-ci était conçu comme un diaporama dans lequel l’ensemble des éléments graphiques – des diapositives aux dessins d’annotations – était synchronisé sur le déroulement temporel d’un média audiovisuel. À la fin 2009, avec Leigh Landy, nous avons réfléchi à la possibilité d’adapter iAnalyse pour la musique électroacoustique – nous avions déjà commencé à expérimenter l’ajout de fonctions spécifiques pour les musiques de support sous la forme d’une maquette. Avec Leigh Landy, nous avons alors imaginé un logiciel couvrant un champ d’applications assez vaste allant de l’analyse des musiques de studio à l’étude de l’interprétation électroacoustique, intégrant plusieurs profils utilisateurs ainsi que des fonctions assez élaborées jusqu’à l’automatisation de certaines actions du musicologue. Une des hypothèses de travail était de faire un développement sous la forme de plugins pour le logiciel Acousmographe. Toutefois, la différence de conception entre iAnalyse et l’Acousmographe ainsi que le cadre réducteur de la réalisation d’un plugin nous a fait préférer ledéveloppement d’un logiciel autonome. Cette idée convenait parfaitement au cadre du projet New multimedia tools for electroacoustic music analysis et nous permettait de tester un certain nombre d’hypothèses sans se préoccuper des limites musicologiques et technologiques.

"Cheap Thrills" é uma canção da cantora australiana Sia, o tema foi composto pela própria intérprete em parceria com Greg Kurstin. Inicialmente a música foi escrita para a cantora Rihanna mas como esta acabou por não gravar Sia decidiu colocar o tema no seu disco (This is acting, 7º álbum). O tema conta ainda com a participação do artista jamaicano Sean Paul.
Este álbum reflete uma faceta importante da carreira de Sia, que nem todos conhecem, é que na verdade, além de cantora, SIA é também uma compositora muito requisitada por grandes artistas do mundo pop. Entre muitos outros destaco nomes como os das cantoras Beyoncé, Adele e Rihanna. Na verdade todo o álbum é constituído por canções que a cantora já havia escrito para outros artistas.
Musicalmente falando, o tema original está em fá#. Como é normal mudei a tonalidade para facilitar a execução: este instrumental está em sol menor. Apesar dos dois bemóis na armação de clave (sib e mib) a melodia não utiliza NUNCA o mib.
A parte A é um pouco difícil de executar por causa das notas graves e rápidas, mas o resto do tema é fácil.
Hamonicamente a música foi composta sobre 4 acordes apenas (sol menor, mib maior, sib maior e fá maior). É um tema fantástico para utilizar com os instrumentos Orff.

Letra / Lyrics
on, come on, turn the radio on
It's Friday night and I won't be long
Gotta do my hair, I put my make up on
It's Friday night and I won't be long

'Til I hit the dance floor
Hit the dance floor
I got all I need
No I ain't got cash
I ain't got cash
But I got you baby

Baby I don't need dollar bills to have fun tonight
(I love cheap thrills!)
Baby I don't need dollar bills to have fun tonight
(I love cheap thrills!)
But I don't need no money
As long as I can feel the beat
I don't need no money
As long as I keep dancing

Come on, come on, turn the radio on
It's Saturday and I won't be long
Gotta paint my nails, put my high heels on
It's Saturday and I won't be long

'Til I hit the dance floor
Hit the dance floor
I got all I need
No I ain't got cash
I ain't got cash
But I got you baby

Baby I don't need dollar bills to have fun tonight
(I love cheap thrills!)
Baby I don't need dollar bills to have fun tonight
(I love cheap thrills!)
I don't need no money
As long as I can feel the beat
I don't need no money
As long as I keep dancing

(I love cheap thrills!)
(I love cheap thrills!)
I don't need no money
As long as I can feel the beat
I don't need no money
As long as I keep dancing
Oh, oh

Baby I don't need dollar bills to have fun tonight
(I love cheap thrills!)
Baby I don't need dollar bills to have fun tonight
(I love cheap thrills!)
I don't need no money
As long as I can feel the beat
I don't need no money
As long as I keep dancing

La, la, la, la, la, la, la
(I love cheap thrills!)
La, la, la, la, la, la, la
(I love cheap thrills!)
La, la, la, la, la, la, la
(I love cheap thrills!)
La, la, la, la, la, la
(I love cheap thrills!)

Cifra melódica
dó ré dó ré
ré dó ré sol sol sol
sol fá fá fá
fá fá sol fá fá

dó ré dó ré
ré dó ré sol sol sol
sol fá fá fá
fá fá sol fá fá

sib sib DÓ lá sib
sib sib DÓ lá sib
sib sib sib fá fá
sib sib DÓ lá
sib sib DÓ lá
sib sib sib sib fá fá

sol lá sib sol
sol sol sol sol
fá sol sol fá fá

sol lá sib sol
sol sol sol sol
fá sol sol fá fá

ré sol lá sib
lá sol ré dó
ré sol lá sib
lá sol ré...

ré sol lá sib
lá sol ré dó
ré sol lá sib
lá sol ré.

dó ré dó ré
ré dó ré sol sol sol
sol fá fá fá
fá fá sol fá fá

dó ré dó ré
ré dó ré sol sol sol
sol fá fá fá
fá fá sol fá fá

sib sib DÓ lá sib
sib sib DÓ lá sib
sib sib sib fá fá
sib sib DÓ lá
sib sib DÓ lá
sib sib sib sib fá fá

sol lá sib sol
sol sol sol sol
fá sol sol fá fá

sol lá sib sol
sol sol sol sol
fá sol sol fá fá

ré sol lá sib
lá sol ré dó
ré sol lá sib
lá sol ré...

ré sol lá sib
lá sol ré dó
ré sol lá sib
lá sol ré...

sib lá sib DÓ DÓ
sib, lá,
sib lá sib DÓ DÓ
sib...

sib lá sib DÓ DÓ
sib, lá,
sib lá sib DÓ DÓ
sib...

Educação Musical
José Galvão

Partitura e outros recursos em: http://josegalvao.wix.com/educacaomusical

Les L-systèmes constituent un outil original de représentation des formes musicales à disposition
des compositeurs, notamment dans le domaine de la musique générative. Peu normatifs, ils
permettent de stimuler la créativité en pensant la forme par croissance organique, une approche
compatible aussi bien avec la tradition ancienne du développement continu qu'avec celle plus
récente des organisations par processus.