Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!bartok.Eng.Sun.COM!bradr From: bradr@bartok.Eng.Sun.COM (Brad Rubenstein) Newsgroups: comp.music Subject: }%bartok.eng@sun.UUCP Message-ID: <136887@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 8 Jun 90 02:31:48 GMT Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM Lines: 570 Music-Research Digest Thu, 7 Jun 90 Volume 5 : Issue 57 Today's Topics: Has nothing at all to DO with Mira Balaban! IBM Ear Training Lessons Perfect Pitch+ IBMPC<--->MIDI Publishing of music in machine-readable form research topics in music *** Send contributions to Music-Research@uk.ac.oxford.prg *** Send administrative requests to Music-Research-Request *** Overseas users should reverse UK addresses and give gateway if necessary *** e.g. Music-Research@prg.oxford.ac.uk *** or Music-Research%prg.oxford.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk *** Back issues, index, etc.: send "help" in a message to archive-server *** @uk.ac.oxford.prg (in the UK) or @bartok.sun.com (elsewhere) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 4 Jun 90 23:36 EDT From: "Sterling Beckwith (York University)" Subject: Has nothing at all to DO with Mira Balaban! To: music-research@prg Thanks to ye ed for allowing us to wallow a bit in high-flying esthetical excursions from the Net re Musical Semantics. But I couldn't help wishing to see the argument come back home eventually to roost, as it were, at least for the readers of this somewhat more circumscribed digest. I have a strong hunch that Handelman has allowed himself to be lured away from his original target. He is surely well aware that in the literature of the recent AI-and- Music pioneers, there is a very conscientious attempt to insist on a usage of the term "semantics" that is quite special, and not to be confused with any usual linguistic, epistemological, or esthetic sense of the word -- all of which as many correspondents have pointed out are interminably sticky. Semantics, in Laske, is something else again -- tho I've never really understood just what -- and has a lot to do with moving the analysis of musical behavior into a domain he recognizes as having to do with Cognitive Science (of whatever brand he may have been currently enamoured). I think -- indeed, I am sure -- Handelman, Smoliar, et al. are among the very few people in the world who could explain, for the ordinary musical or technical reader, just what this peculiar sense of "semantics" is. It should certainly be much easier to give a critique raisonnee of this very special and limited use of the term "musical semantics" than to engage all comers in a full-swinging debate on musical meaning . And I venture to suggest that it might also be more to the point, in helping to sharpen the wits of those conscientious and able researchers, particularly in Europe, who seem still to find such earlier formulations as Laske's intellectually congenial. The several interesting postings by Leung may well be reaching for the kinds and levels of structural meaning in music which gave to Laske's computerish talk of "semantics", and his special view of musical semiotics, the relevance to real music they sometimes could be imagined to possess. Not being able to do more than thank him for very bravely giving voice to his difficult and stimulating thoughts, I can only hope that they too will be addressed, in any subsequent endeavor by our high-flying philosophers of the Net to return to the more mundane theme of Music-research-or-AI-research-or-What? Sterling Beckwith York University, Toronto, Canada ------------------------------ Date: 5 Jun 90 16:51:03 GMT From: Bruce Lambrecht Subject: IBM Ear Training Lessons To: music-research@prg Message-ID: <11786@sun.udel.edu> Brian Russell requested information on ear training for the IBM. At the University of Delaware we have a program developed by Dr. Fred Hofstetter called GUIDO which is made up of six lessons that address specific areas of importance to ear training. They include intervals, melodies, chord qualities, harmonies, rhythms, and rhythmic melodies. The lessons require an IBM PC, XT, AT or PS/2 model 25 or 30 with at least 256K of memory (640K preferred), and either two floppy disk drives or one floppy and one hard disk drive. A mouse, a color display, and a color graphics adaptor are also required. Sound can be generated by the IBM Music Feature or a MIDI keyboard. E-mail me with your US mail address and I'll send a pamphlet describing the program and how to order it. Cost: $95.00 for each lesson (intervals, melodies, etc.) or $475 for all six. Bruce@SUN.ACS.UDEL.EDU ------------------------------ Date: 5 Jun 90 06:07:39 GMT From: Susan Curry Subject: Perfect Pitch+ IBMPC<--->MIDI To: music-research@prg Message-ID: <3936@milton.acs.washington.edu> Again let me thank everyone who wrote to me shared their thoughts on perfect pitch and or computerized ear training. Since so many people wrote me requesting a summary I'll bring you up to date. First a quick overview: I've often had difficulty finding other musicians who were willing to practice ear training with me. I'd read an instruction booklet published by Mr. David Burge, on acquiring perfect pitch, and was actually doing the recommended exercises but was wanting for a regular practice partner. It occurred to me that it should be possible to rig up some sort of ear training system based on an IBM PC and a MIDI device. The software, which I would write, would have some low level support to control the MIDI device. That being done, it seemed easy implement exercises from Mr. Burge's book, or any other source, as subroutines. One additional constraint is that since I'd be using computers at work I'd need a serial MIDI interface, as opposed to a MIDI card. I telephoned KEY ELECTRONICS (800-533-MIDI) and asked for their brochure. They have a serial port interface for $119.95, not including cables, which is cheap I'm told. They also have a software toolkit to control the MIDI interface for $39.95. I'm not sure how necessary this toolkit is. There are lots toolkits for serial communications and I don't see why driving the serial port to control the modem is fundamentally different from driving the serial port to control the MIDI port. If anyone out there has personal experience and or strong opinions on this subject let me know. There are NeXT computers in a computer services building on campus. The NeXT already has an impressive sound device built in, which is a consideration since I don't currently own a MIDI device. Writing for the NeXT would involve a steeper learning curve as I am a novice in C and UNIX. Someone I spoke with briefly at the UW School of Music encouraged me to learn LISP (!) in order to take advantage of a music toolkit for the NeXT. What other people had to say: dan@mlp.scs.com (Dan Adler) writes: >Since I work on a SUN sparc-station which has (not so good >but acceptable) sound producing capabilities, I've >programmed a whole bunch of stuff on it as exercises which >I listen to by earphones at work. This includes the perfect >pitch ones plus the ones from Burge's relative pitch >course, which I very highly reccomend. Unfortunately, if >you don't have a SUN workstation, you can't use my stuff. Yes, unfortunately. He continues: > By the way, I thought that for a practice system it may >be best to use something closer to pure sine waves, so that >you don't end up listening for the `wrong' quality of a >note (i.e. to its timbre - which results from the overtone >compositions as opposed to the frequency). That's interesting, is it more confusing to listen to a "natural tone" which contains pronounced overtones, that may influence one's perception of absolute pitch, or is it more confusing to listen to a sine wave, which is acoustically pure but is foreign to the musical ear. When I call the sine wave a "foreign" sound I mean people may have some distracting emotional reaction to the sine wave if they don't associate that timber with music and a music making. The situation is further complicated by the fact that many "natural" instruments don't have a perfectly uniform timber throughout their range. David Burge encourages people to use the instrument they play as the sound source for the exercises, until they have a certain fluency, and then try to identify tones sounding on a less familiar instrument. Commenting on my original posting: >The gist of this color hearing is that each note has, using >my own words, has a timber that is independent of voices or >instruments. The notes F# and E flat have the most >pronounced timber, F# being bright, E flat being mellow or >dull. The exercises start out using just these two notes Justin Shuttleworth responds: >I have some questions. If the you're using the well- >tempered scale, then (by definition) the pitch ratio from >semitone to adjacent semitone is is exactly the same, no >matter where you are in the scale (e.g. ascending ratio = >12th root of 2). If you use a synthesiser which produces >the same timbral content for any pitch, I don't see how >different absolute pitches can have different "absolute" >timbres.....(stuff deleted)..... >Where does the absolute pitch detection come from? I have >to say at this point that I have perfect pitch, and have >tried to explain why I say things like F# is bright. I understand that those with perfect pitch can be very sensitive to intonation, but as far as whether or not perfect pitch is teachable, I'm not convinced scale temperament is relevant at all. Certainly since the tempered scale is what we in this century listen to, I fail to see how it could be a confounder. Perhaps I misunderstood his point entirely. He continues: >A common statistic given is that 1 in 10 people have >perfect pitch (altough not all of them have musical >training and hence are not aware of their ability). What's >different about these people? In my reply to Mr. Justin I forgot to ask about that 1 in 10 statistic. Has anybody else heard this? Don Mullen writes: Brian, > I had the same trouble that you did with the Perfect >Pitch course - no one willing to put in a little time >everyday to be my partner. So I put it on the shelf and >decided to wait until I got a MIDI set up and some >programming time. > Last week I got a MusicQuest MQX-16S card/Cakewalk Pro >3.0 combination and the MQX programmer's toolkit. I >discovered that I could use CakeWalk's CAL programming >feature to randomly choose notes and play them ...(stuff deleted) > This is easy to to with few notes (I'm just now, as of >last night, starting out on E-flat and F-sharp), but I will >probably write some C code to do the more sophisticated >drills. I'll let you know how that goes. My regards Mr. Mullen, and please *DO* let me know how it goes! He continues: > Please let me know if you find out any more >information. If I had the time, I'd develop a really nice >MS-Windows based Perfect Pitch and Relative Pitch (did you >get that course?) program -- maybe I will later this year. >Someone posted that Burge (sp?) was hiring a programmer >last year - I wonder what the result will be..... If the new software is anything like the book it will probably be theoretically sound, over priced, contain very little code, and you'll need two computers to run it. ;) These final postings I received this week and haven't gotten a chance to follow up on them yet. Mark Gresham writes: >I suggest you talk to Dr. who is a research >fellow out there at the University in Seattle. She >developed software under an IBM grant (with a programming >assistant doing the hacking) for teaching Modulo-12 ear >training/theory. If you can't reach her via the >University, you can reach find her under in >the phone book. So she won't think you're wierd and out of >left field, use my name. Then she'll think you're wierder >and farther out into left field! :-) However, she teaches >various and sundry including Dalcroze. Let me know if you >are able to reach her. Thanks for the tip! I'm sorry I haven't responded to your letter personally yet. When I do you can explain to me what Modulo-12 and Dalcroze are. BTW I didn't want to quote your friend's name on the newsgroup until I'd gotten a chance to speak with her. Peter Velikonja writes: >Brian, >I'm pretty late in responding to your post regarding >perfect pitch but I don't read the news too often (since it >sucks up all my time). Anyway, I have been doing some work >in this area, and I'm curious about replies you may have >gotten. (stuff deleted) > I'm working on a program which attempts to teach basic >ear training. It runs on a NeXT machine. Right now it just >plays simple melodies, and you click the appropriate notes >on screen with the mouse. If you like I can send it to >you. I should have a Mac version of it in a few months. >The program tries to come up with melodies that are >appropriate to your level of expertise, and if you do well >the melodies get harder. (stuff deleted) >This is probably all old news to you, but if not let me >know and I'll send what I have. As I say, I'm interested >in any references you have collected. I was very eager to try out his program, and to pick his brain further. In his next letter: >You can probably FTP my ET program from any NeXT computer, >assuming you have an account on one that is on a network. >This might be a problem for you if you don't get around >much in UNIX (I speak from personal experience). Get >someone in CS to help you, He was right about it being a problem. Actually I don't think the public access NeXT machines here are on a NeXT network. I think people have to telenet to their mainframe account to send mail, etc. As I said before I'm new at UNIX and I haven't had time to check it out further. He continues: >Regarding hardware, you have a number of options, and they >vary according to which computer you want to use. To use >MIDI with an IBM or Amiga you can get the CMU MIDI Toolkit, >which is available here for about $20 (pays for xeroxing >the manual and for the diskettes). If you send mail to >Roger Dannenberg (rbd@spice.cmu.edu) he can give you better >information about what it does and how to get it. It >essentially lets you trap notes from the keyboard and also >to play notes from within your C program, which is what I >guess you want to do (except maybe not in C, hmm...). Ann >Blombach is using something with the Mac in Pascal, which >may be more what you want. She describes it in an article: >Tools for Macintosh Music Courseware Development: Hewlett's >Representational System and Structured Programming. >Journal of Computer Based Instruction, v. 16 No. 2:50 >Spring 1989. (stuff deleted) >I'll send you the current version of an article I wrote >which outlies the work I have been doing, and has a list of >references you are probably familiar with anyway. That >will be in a mail message after this one. So now I have quite a number of leads I need to follow up on. They all sound very promising. Mr. Velikonja thank you again for your help! The article he sent is also very informative. He discusses his software in terms of traditional problems in teaching ear training, user interface, algorithms for adjusting the difficulty level of the exercises in response the user's success rates, and follows up with a hefty bibliography. Pending Mr Velikon's approval I'll post the address he mentions for his software. I'll also forward to the list, or to interested parties his marvelously written article, again pending his approval. Thanks again to all of you who were kind enough to write. I'll let you know how things progress. And again, if any of you are interested in discussing ear training or ear training systems post to the group, or by all means feel free to write to me personally. Brian R. Russell curry@milton.u.washington.edu Seattle, WA : ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Jun 90 17:17:05 WET DST From: CTImusic Subject: Publishing of music in machine-readable form To: music-research@prg Message-ID: <23734.9006051617@central1.lancaster.ac.uk> The CTI Centre for Music has been asked by Andrew Potter of Oxford University Press to circulate the following letter and questionnaire. If anyone has an interest in the publication of music in machine-readable form, would they please fill in his questionnaire and send it direct to him at the following address. Andrew Potter Director, Music Publishing Oxford University Press Music Department Walton Street OXFORD OX2 6DP United Kingdom Thanks, Lisa Whistlecroft, CTI Centre for Music Lancaster University .............................................................................. Start of letter MUSIC PUBLISHING IN ELECTRONIC FORM We intend to issue a series of music publications in machine-readable form. You may be aware of our publishing of other types of text in this form eg the Oxford Shakespeare and the Oxford English Dictionary. We are currently planning our first publications in the series and would be most grateful for your help in ascertaining the type of repertoire, the form it should take, and the way it might be used in order to be of most use to scholars and others in the musical community. I append a copy of a brief questionnaire and would be grateful if you could complete and return as many copies as are needed to reflect various projects within your department. As you will see, we would also like to discover any substantial encoded texts, with a view to possible publication. Thank you for your co-operation. Yours faithfully, Andrew Potter Director, Music publishing ............................................................................... QUESTIONNAIRE 1. Contact Name ............................................................ University ................................................................. Address ................................... ........................................... ........................................... 2. Work undertaken in your department which has involved encoding music texts into machine-readable form: a) What music was encoded?................................................. ............................................................................ ............................................................................ ............................................................................ b) Which encoding scheme was used (eg DARMS, Score, etc)? ............................................................................ ............................................................................ c) What was the reason for encoding it? ................................... ............................................................................ ............................................................................ ............................................................................ d) By what software was a) effected? proprietary (please specify name) .......................................... ............................................................................ own software (please describe) ............................................. ............................................................................ ............................................................................ ............................................................................ e) On what hardware configuration wa the text encoded and used? ............................................................................ ............................................................................ ............................................................................ f) What market would you perceive for your data outside your own research? ............................................................................ ............................................................................ g) If so, would you be willing to allow OUP to publish your data in machine- readable format? ............................................................................ 3. Published Texts a) Would it be beneficial for you to be able to buy corpora of music in machine-readable form, such as Complete Editions, musical genres, etc, which can be accessed by proprietary software? ............................................................................ ............................................................................ b) If so, what particular music would be of most interest? ................ ............................................................................ ............................................................................ c) In what form? Floppy disk/CD ROM etc .................................. ............................................................................ ............................................................................ d) What form of code would be most easy for you to deal with? ............................................................................ ............................................................................ End of questionnaire. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 Jun 90 22:34 CST From: jeff beer Subject: research topics in music To: music-research@com.sun.eng.bartok Message-ID: <9006050335.AA28063@Sun.COM> i just did a master's thesis on an expert system for jazz harmonization, but don't ask me about it because I am sick of it. i just want to do compositions and improvisation with a computer. but one area I recently had been reading up on that I think is worthwhile is discussed in great deal in the publication "Action and Perception in Rhythm and Music", papers given at a symposium in the 3rd International Conference on Event Perception and Action, published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. Most of the papers deal with the subtle various of time and amplitude which music occur in musical performance to give it life. Those of you involved with sequencers and drum machines know how lifeless music sounds if you put musical performance data in straight. In an attempt to get around this, sequencer and drum machine manufactures have put "humanizers" or "swing" options in their products. Often these are to put slight random variations in performance. However, as one can imagine, random variations may help, but one would assume that to have a real powerful "feel", there would be some other relationship. It is the goal of most of the research presented in this symposium to uncover the nature of these rhythmic phenomena. One researcher, P. Reinholdsonn, discusses the electronic equipment used to measure these variations, and presents an analysis of a drum solo of Roy Haynes. Manfred Clynes has a variety of charts on the pulse and amplitude warping, and in the recorded example shows how Hayden or Beethoven music sounds with a "pulse" other than the proper one. (i.e. Beethoven played with a Schubert pulse) Other researchers seem to approach the same phenomena from a variety of perspectives/ research biases, ect. On the other hand, you might learn just as much by reading Miles Davis' autobiography, when he talks about Tony Williams. So this may be of interst to people involved in computer music because 1) you can use computers to measure this phenomena and 2) use this to make a computer swing. Jeff Beer, Chicago (scrambled eggs? it's how he scrambles them!) ------------------------------ End of Music-Research Digest -- ---Brad Rubenstein-----Sun Microsystems Inc.-----bradr@sun.com---