Genova 2005

Summer School in Sound and Music Computing

July 25 - 29, 2005
InfoMus Lab - DIST - University of Genova
Genova, Italy

Organized by the 6th Framework Programme IST FET Open Coordination Action S2S² Project

Barcelona 2006

Summer School in Sound and Music Computing

Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Barcelona, Spain
July 24-28, 2006

This Summer School is organized by the S2S² project and the Music Technology Group of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, with the goal to promote interdisciplinary education and research in the field of Sound and Music Computing. The School is aimed at graduate students working on their Master or PhD thesis, but it is open to any person carrying out research in this field.

This is the second Summer School organized by S2S², last year it took place in Genova.

Teachers

• Roberto Bresin ( Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm)
• Nicola Bernardini (Conservatory of Padova)
• Antonio Camurri (University of Genova)
• Alain De Cheveigné (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris)
• Henkjan Honing (University of Amsterdam)
• Marc Leman (University of Ghent)
• Xavier Serra (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona)
• Giovanni De Poli (University of Padova)
• Davide Rocchesso (University of Verona)
• Vesa Valimaki (Helsinki University of Technology)
• Bill Verplank (Stanford University)
• Gerhard Widmer (Johannes Kepler University Linz)

Invited Experts

• Jyri Huopaniemi (Nokia Research Center, Helsinki)

• Leigh Landy (Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester)

• Fabien Levy (Columbia University, New York)

• Pierre Louis Xech (Microsoft Research, Cambridge)

Academic Program

• 6 hours of lectures by Bill Verplank on Interface Design and 6 hours of lectures by Henkjan Honing on Music Cognition.
• 9 hours of presentations by the participating students and discussions on their research work.
• 20 hours of presentations and discussions related to the S2S² Sound and Music Computing Roadmap.

The lectures are designed to be of interest to any graduate student or researcher in the field of Sound and Music Computing. The topics chosen for this year are Interface Design and Music Cognition; relevant topics in our research fields which have particular methodologies and research strategies. The lectures will present these particular methodologies and their application in Music related problems.

All the participating students will give short presentations on their current research. The emphasis will be given to methodological and context issues. Thus each presentation should emphasize the methodological approach chosen and the scientific, technological and industrial context of the research. The discussions will give feed back to the students that should be useful for the continuation of their research.

The main topic of the summer school will be the Roadmap on Sound and Music Computing that is being written as part of the S2S² project. There will be special lectures by invited experts and discussions on two major parts of the Roadmap, the industrial and the cultural contexts of the field. In particular the focus will be given to the academic research and both its relationship with the industrial exploitation and its use in contemporary music production. The resulting discussions will contribute to the roadmap.

Program schedule:

Student presentations (15 minutes each):

Scientific context: Monday 24th of July

• "Evolving populations of computational models and applications to expressive music performance" - Amaury Hazan
  In the context of expressive performance modeling, we aim to induce expressive performance models using a performance database which was extracted from a set of acoustical recordings. We propose a new approach called Evolutionary Population of Generative Models (EPGM) based on Evolutionary Computation (EC). We present a first instantiation of EPGM based on Strongly Typed Genetic Programming (STGP), in which the evolved programs are constrained to have the structure of Regression Trees. We show this approach is more flexible than well-established machine learning approaches because (i) it evolves a population of models which may produce different predictions, (ii) it enables the use of custom data types at different levels (primitives inputs and outputs, prediction type), (iii) it enables the use of elaborate and possibly domain-specific accuracy measurements. We illustrate this latter point by presenting a fitness function based on melodic similarity which was fit to human judgement based on a listening experiment. We finally show this approach can be applied to high level transformations (e.g. mood) and present some future EPGM extensions.
• "Depth perception" - Delphine Devallez
  The present research work deals with depth perception, and how to render sound sources spatially separated in distance and give a sense of perspective. Over the past decades, the majority of research on spatial sound reproduction has concentrated on directional localization, resulting in increasingly sophisticated virtual audio display systems capable of providing very accurate information about the direction of a virtual sound source. However it is clear that full 3-dimensional rendering also requires an understanding of how to reproduce sound source distance. Since a few years a couple of researchers in psychology, neuroscience and computer engineering have shown interest for this third dimension, that could further enlarge the bandwidth of interaction in multimodal display and provide newly designed interfaces. Moreover since display technology is already able to produce visual depth, it seems natural to enrich the sounds of objects and events with information about their relative distance to the user. From a technological point of view, the auditory-visual interactions resulting from this multimodal presentation of information should then be taken into account and further scientifically investigated , since they are still poorly understood in particular with regard to depth perception.
• "Gesture based instrument synthesis" - Alfonso Pérez
  Synthesis of traditional music instruments has been an active research area and there exist successful implementations of instruments with low degree of control like non-sustained excitation instruments. But for instruments with sustained excitation, such as bowed strings or wind instruments, where the interaction between instrument and performer is continuous, the quality of existing models is far from realistic. In general, musical instrument synthesis techniques try to model the instrument but forget about the interaction between performer and instrument, that is musically much more relevant than the instrument itself. This interaction covers expressivity, the intentional nuances and gestures that make the performer, but also what we call naturalness, that is, non intentional gestures made by the performer due to the physical constraints of the instrument, the playing technique, etc. These non-intentional gestures give a specific flavor to the sound of the performance, that make it sound natural and realistic. We can roughly classify the existing synthesis techniques into two categories: Physical models that focus on physical phenomena of sound production, and spectral models that focus on sound perception. With physical models naturalness and expressivity can hardly be reached without the need of controlling a huge amount of parameters, that require the instrument itself, as well as a mastery comparable with the traditional performer and spectral models lack of performer interaction and articulation, that is, gestures. The aim of this work is to try to improve the quality in instrument sound synthesis, specifically for the violin family. We propose a hybrid model between spectral and physical models to take advantage of the characteristics of both approaches, focusing on the gestures of the performer with the objective to provide naturalness in the synthesis.
• "Expressive gesture and music: analysis of emotional behavior in music performances" - Ginevra Castellano
  I present some examples of analysis of music performances aiming at investigating the role of expressive gesture in music, with a special focus on recognition of emotions. I performed an experiment in which two musicians, a pianist and a cello player, played an excerpt from the Sonate no 4 op 102/1 for piano and cello from L. van Beethoven in different emotional conditions. I show how to extract expressive movement features from music performance and preliminary results from the analysis of such data. The experiment has been carried out in collaboration with GERG. Feature extraction is performed in real-time by the new EyesWeb 4 open platform (available at www.eyesweb.org).
• "Mapping from perception to sound generation" - Sylvain Legroux
• "The role of audiofeedback to improve motor performance of subjects" - Giovanna Varni

Social & Cultural context: Tuesday 25th of July

• "Musical interfaces accessible to novices" - James Mc Dermott
  Our research focusses on one sub-task of musical composition, that of setting synthesizer parameters. We use interactive Evolutionary Computation (iEC) to aid inexperienced users in controlling synthesizers: it allows an iterative design process in which the user's main task is judging results, rather than constructing solutions. We discuss potential advances in iEC, including a new interface component and a method of supplementing it with non-interactive EC. We also present results on non-interactive EC performance. We discuss the possibilities of applying the same approach to other sub-tasks of composition; and finally we imagine the implications of using the iEC approach to remove the constraints of skill and prior knowledge from the composition process, so that it becomes purely a matter of taste.
• "Voice analysis for singing education" - Oscar Mayor
  The current research in tools for singing education consists mainly in real-time tools with visual feedback giving information about tuning and tempo of the singing performance and voice quality characteristics, referring to timbre and formants of the singer’s voice. These tools mainly use real-time visualization of pitch curve against time and short-term spectrum or spectrogram giving instantaneous visual feedback to the performer. In this talk a system for evaluating singing performances is presented where the singing performance is analyzed using a MIDI score as reference and a visual expressive transcription of the performance is given as a result. The expression transcription consist on the notes in the MIDI score aligned to the user performance and each note segmented into sub-regions (attack, sustain, release, transition, vibrato). Each region is labeled with the kind of expression detected by the system following a set of heuristic rules based on analysis descriptors. The expression labels assigned to each sub-region are based in a previous expression categorization done manually from a large set of singing performance executions in order to distinguish between common resources used by singers in pop-rock music. Some analysis descriptors can be also visualized simultaneously by the performer to have a rich visual feedback of the performance.
• "Visual feedback in learning to perform music" - Alex Brandmeyer
  The use of visual feedback to aid musicians in improving their performances has recently been researched using different visual representations and analysis techniques. We recently conducted experiment in which percussion students imitated different patterns recorded by a teacher with and without the use of visual feedback. In the experiment we used a real drum kit with contact microphones attached to record data about the timing and dynamics of the performances. We provided 2 different forms of visual feedback as well as a control condition with no visual feedback to test the effects of visual feedback and the type of visual representation on performance accuracy. The first form of feedback, analytic, utilized a scrolling display similar to a musical score, while the second, holistic, presented a changing shape drawn using probabilities generated by a real time statistical analysis of the incoming notes. Qualitative feedback from the subjects indicated that the visual feedback was found to be useful. We are currently doing further analysis of the data collected to see if the visual feedback improved performance, and if so, in what ways.
• "The rigid boundaries of musical genres" - Enric Guaus
  One of the most active areas in Music Information Retrieval is that of building automatic genre classification systems. Most of their systems can achieve good results (80% of correct decisions) when the number of genres to be classified is small (i.e. less than 10). They usually rely on timbre and rhythmic features that do not cover the whole range ofmusical facets, nor the whole range of conceptual abstractness that seem to be used when humans perform this task. The aim of our work is to improve our knowledge about the importance of different musical facets and features on genre decisions. We present a series of listening experiments where audio has been altered in order to preserve some properties of music (rhythm, timbre, harmonics…) but at the same time degrading other ones. The pilot experiment we report here used 42 excerpts of modified audio (representing 9 musical genres). Listeners, who had different musical background, had to identify the genre of each one of the excerpts.
• "Programming for the Masses - Computer Music Systems as Visual Programming Languages" - Guenter Geiger
• "Intonation and expression: a study and model of choral intonation practices" - Johanna Devaney
  The modeling of choral intonation practices, much like those of non-fretted string ensembles, presents a unique challenge because at any given point in a piece a choir’s tuning cannot be consistently related to a single reference point; rather a combination of horizontal and vertical musical factors form the reference point for the tuning. The proposed methodology addresses the conflict through a combination of theoretical and technological approaches. In the theoretical approach, the vertical tendencies are addressed in relation to the harmonic series and theories of sensory consonance, while the horizontal tendencies are examined in terms of recent theories of tonal tension and attraction. The technological, or computational, approach uses statistical machine learning techniques to build a model of choral intonation practices from the microtonal pitch variations between recorded choral performances. The observed horizontal intonation practices may then be examined as expressive phenomena by taking the horizontal tendencies inferred from the tension models as a norm, and then viewing musically appropriate deviations from this norm as expressive phenomena. Thus horizontal intonation practices may be related to not only to musical expectation but also musical meaning or emotion, as it relates to performance.
• "Object Design for Tangible Musical Interfaces"- Martin Kaltenbrunner
  This research focuses on the design of passive tactile features for tangible user interface components and their relation to arbitrarily assigned acoustic descriptions. Tactile dimensions such as surface structure, temperature, weight, the global shape and size allow the classification of passive tangibles into generic object classes and specific object instances. Within the context of the reacTable, a modular electro-acoustic synthesizer with a tangible user interface, these tactile features can be used to encode the various synthesizer components in the haptic domain allowing the easy object identification with a simple grasp or hand enclosure. The acoustic properties of the synthesizer components will be defined with adjectives describing the perceptive quality of the resulting sound. The current design of the reacTable tangibles defines a series of acrylic objects in different geometric shapes with attached colour or symbol codes, which proved to be problematic in a dark concert environment as well as for sight-disabled users. A user study shall clarify if the assigned object descriptions and the chosen hypothetical mappings between the tactile perception and sonic behaviour of a chosen synthesis component are valid and should eventually lead to an improved design of the tangibles for the instrument.

Industrial context: Wednesday 26th of July

• "Free software and music computing" - Pau Arumí
• "Toys and video games" - John Arroyo
• "Scratching and DJs" - Kjetil Falkenberg Hansen
• "Leisure and voice control" - Jordi Janer
  The role of Sound and Music Computing in the industry has evolved over the last decades in the three typical targets: studio equipment, musical instruments and home entertainment. While studio equipment and musical instruments have already massively incorporated SMC technologies, home entertainment systems will be presumably our main target for the next years. Is in this context that we can use the term "leisure", which can be applied to a convergence of home media centers and game consoles.
  This presentation addresses voice control as a way to transmit musical information to a musical system. The main application of voice control is instrument synthesizers, useful for instance in karaoke devices. Nevertheless, the research outcome can be also applied to control conducting or visualization systems. This research consists of two parts: voice gesture description and definition of adequate mapping strategies. Studying instrument imitation, we can define a voice gesture as a sequence of consonant-vowel phonemes. Phonetic segmentation and classification in broad phonetic classes are being developed. In addition, slow-varying perceptual envelopes are added to the voice gesture. Summarizing, a voice gesture is described by context descriptors and continuous envelopes. Mapping these voice gestures to the instrument control will depend on the instrument and the technique employed. Here, instead of constraining voice description to MIDI messages, we propose to do a more adequate mapping for signal-driven synthesis that can be either knowledge-based or based on machine learning. The talk will conclude looking at current commercial systems and potential use-cases of voice control in a leisure context.
• "Music recommendation systems" - Marco Tiemann & Oscar Celma
• "Audio melody extraction: the importance of high level features in music information retrieval applications" - Karin Dressler

Workshop: Social and cultural context for Sound and Music Computing

• Morning:
  • S2S2 presentation- Nicola Bernardini
  • "Social context for Sound and Music Computing"- Marc Leman
  • "Is a Science without Conscience a support for music?" - Fabien Levy
    I will first show how both composition and science are related with the more general problem of their representations, the first playing with signs to build new music-worlds (cf. the couple graphemology/grammatology in semiotic), and the latter being deeply united with its representations (cf. Derrida). Without a high conscience of the episteme implied by those representations, composing and doing musical sciences are "but the ruin of the soul", to parody Rabelais. To exemplify my position, I will then try to "deconstruct" different scientific models working on the controversial notion of "musical consonance" (historical musicology, acoustics and psychoacoustics).
  • "Investigating a Sound-based Paradigm and its Social Implications" - Leigh Landy
• Afternoon:
  • Panel: Social and Cultural Context for Sound and Music Computing: Does technology drive music or viceversa?
    Nicola Bernardini, Marc Leman, Fabien Levy, Leigh Landy, Davide Rocchesso, Roberto Bresin
    

Workshop: Industrial context for Sound and Music Computing

• "Initial ideas for the Industrial Context of the S2S2 roadmap" - Xavier Serra
• "Sound, Music and Mobility - Key Challenges for Future Research" - Dr. Jyri Huopaniemi, Head of Strategic Research, Nokia Research Center
  In this presentation, I will give an overview of relevant research challenges for sound and music in future mobile devices. The background and history of mobile computing will be explained, and the presentation is augmented by current research examples. Key issues in technology, user experience and business outlook will be covered. Finally, recommendations for concentration areas in future research of sound and music will be given.
• Panel: Industrial Context for Sound and Music Computing: Is technology transfer working?
  Xavier Serra, Pierre-Louis Xech, Jyri Huopaniemi, Vesa Valimaki, Antonio Camurri, Alain de Cheveigné
  

Application

A maximum of 20 students will be admitted to the school. The candidates will be evaluated by the teachers and the application should include the following documents in pdf format:

• Curriculum vitae (max. 1 page)
• Certified copy of academic degree
• Summary of the research proposal (max. 2 pages)

Students have to send their applications to Xavier Serra before May 1st. Notification of acceptance will be given no later than May 15th.

For people not wishing to make research presentations during the school, a brief curriculum vitae is sufficient and the deadline for application is June 30th.

These people should also send their applications to Xavier Serra or Emilia Gómez.

Registration Fee

The regular registration fee is 300 €. This fee also covers the costs for lunch and various evening social events.

The registration fee for students is 200 €. This fee also covers the costs for lunch and various evening social events.

There will be a few student scholarships that will cover the registration fee.

The deadline for registration is June 30th.

Traveling and Accommodation

Participants will have to arrange their own travel and accommodation. University dorms are available at a special rate. For additional information contact Cristina Garrido.

Social events

• Banquet, Tuesday 25th: El Chiringuito de Escribá

• Concerts at Metronom:

  • 25th of July at 21:00 "Deriva del Cristal Sonoro" (IUA-Phonos grant): by Carmen Platero and Cristián Sotomayor
    Installation - Performance

  • 26th of July at 21:00 ReacTable and Ensamble Crumble

  • 27th of July at 21:00 Concert around Harry Sparnaay, supervisor: Harry Sparnaay and performed by Harry Sparnaay students at ESMUC:
    Irene Ferrer Feliu, flute
    Alejandro Castillo Vega, clarinet
    Victor de la Rosa, Daniel Arias Romeo, Gerard Sibila Roma, bass clarinet

• Search for other events in Barcelona during the summer school

Venue

• School: the school sessions will take place in the França Building of Pompeu Fabra University (at the Auditorium), as well as coffee breaks.
  Passeig de Circumval·lació, 8. 08003 Barcelona (map)

• Lunches: Navia restaurant, in front of the França building.
  Comerç 33. 08003 Barcelona (map)

• Banquet: El Chiringuito de Escribá.
  Bogatell beach. (map)

• Concerts: Metronom.
  C. Fusina 9 - 08003 Barcelona (map)

Stockholm 2007

Summer School in Sound and Music Computing

KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Stockholm, Sweden
July 2-6, 2007

This Summer School is organized by the Music Acoustics Group of the KTH in Stockholm, with the goal to promote interdisciplinary education and research in the field of Sound and Music Computing (SMC). The School is aimed at graduate students working on their Master or PhD thesis, but it is open to any person carrying out research in this field.

This is the third SMC Summer School. The first two were organized by the S2S² Coordination Action, last year it took place in Barcelona and two years ago in Genova.

Teachers

• Anders Askenfelt (Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm)
• Elvira Brattico (University of Helsinki, Finland)
• Roberto Bresin (Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm)
• Nicola Bernardini (Conservatory of Padova)
• Cumhur Erkut (Helsinki University of Technology)
• Federico Fontana (University of Verona, Italy)
• Anders Friberg (Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm)
• Lalya Gaye (Viktoria Institute, Gothenburg, Sweden)
• Minna Huotilainen (University of Helsinki, Finland)
• Olivier Lartillot (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)
• Pietro Polotti (Conservatory of Como)
• Davide Rocchesso (University of Verona)
• Stefania Serafin (Aalborg University Copenhagen)
• Patrick Susini (IRCAM)
• Johan Sundberg (Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm)
• Sten Ternström (Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm)
• Gualtiero Volpe (University of Genova)

Invited Experts

• Jonas Engdegård (Senior Research Engineer, Coding Technologies, Stockholm)
• Romain Haettel (ÅF-Ingemansson AB, Stockholm)
• Staffan Ljung (Manager for Entertainment Solutions, Ericsson, Stockholm)
• Ernst Nathorst (CEO of Propellerhead Software, Stockholm)
• David Åström (Kocky / Soul Supreme, Stockholm)

Academic Program

• 6 hours of lectures by Minna Huotilainen and Elvira Brattico on Neurosciences and Music and 6 hours of lectures by Lalya Gaye on Mobile Music and Locative Audio Technology.
• 3 hours of oral presentations by the participating students and discussions
  on their research work.
• poster presentations by the participating students during coffee breaks (1.5 hour every day of the School)
• 12 hours hands-on activities by the participating students in collaboration with the teachers of the Summer School
• 4 hours of oral presentations and discussions by experts from industries in the field of Sound and Music Computing.
• 2 hours of oral presentations by leaders of EU funded projects in the field of Sound and Music Computing.

The lectures are designed to be of interest to any graduate student or researcher in the field of Sound and Music Computing. The topics chosen for this year are Neurosciences and Music and Mobile Music and Locative Audio Technology; relevant topics in our research fields which have particular methodologies and research strategies. The lectures will present these particular methodologies and their application in Music related problems.

All the participating students will give short presentations on their current research during a speed-talk of four minutes. The emphasis will be given on research questions and particularly on methodological issues related to their research project. Students will receive a written feedback from the teachers that should be useful for the continuation of their research.

All the participating students will present a poster about their PhD work. The posters will be on show for all the duration of the Summer School, with discussions during coffee breaks.

All students will work on mini-projects focusing on the themes discussed during the Summer School. Results of the mini-projects will be presented on the final day of the School. Mini-projects will give the opportunity for hands-on activities such as testing software tools or planning of experiments.

Final program schedule:

!

Neurosciences and Music

July 2nd, 9:00-11:00
Main research topics in the neurosciences of music
Elvira Brattico, PhD, Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Dept of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland
Abstract Main research topics in the neurosciences of music: modularity, musical vs. language syntax and semantics, lateralization of brain functions for music, auditory cortex plasticity, brain structures devoted to musical performance and music emotions.

July 3rd, 11:15-13:00
Methods of brain imaging research (slides in PDF)
Minna Huotilainen, PhD, Docent, researcher, Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Dept of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland

July 4th, 9:00-11:00
The development of musical abilities (slides in PDF)
Minna Huotilainen, PhD, Docent, researcher, Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Dept of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland

Mobile Music and Locative Audio Technology

Lalya Gaye, PhD, Viktoria Institute, Gothenburg, Sweden
July 2nd, 11:15-13:00
July 3rd, 9:00-11:00
July 4th, 11:15-13:00

Click here for suggested reading

Part I

• Introducing mobile music and locative audio
• Background:
  - Sound and mobility
  - Technologicalexperiments, art and consumer products in urban life
  - Locative media in general

   

• Main themes and projects. Characteristics, challenges and design opportunities of mobile music and locative audio.

Part II

• Technologies developed in research
• Available technologies
• Human-computer interaction methodologies, theories and design process applied to mobile music and locative audio

Speed Talks

In a maximum of 4 slides in total (remember that you will have 4 minutes for your presentation) present your research questions/problems/crazy ideas/etc. on which you would like feedback from those present.
A printout of your slides will be available to the participants. Please notice that presentations longer than 4 slides will not be accepted!!!
Download here the powerpoint file with the instructions and the official format for the slides.

Poster presentations

Students are invited to present a poster about their research work.
Download here the powerpoint file with the instructions and the official format for the poster.

Hands-on sessions: Mini-projects

Download here the PDF file with the list of proposed mini-projects. Students can also propose alternative projects.

The Future Sessions, Thursday July 5th

The future of music: What do we need? How will it be?

9:00 Semi-parametric audio coding - Today and beyond (slides in PDF format)
Jonas Engdegård, Senior Research Engineer, Coding Technologies
Abstract By the time AAC (Advanced Audio Coder, the format used in e.g. iTunes music store) was standardized in 1997, the audio coding research community felt they had nearly reached the limit of how efficient a perceptual audio coder can be. However, the development of the last decade has resulted in large, unexpected improvements, mainly because of the introduction of semi-parametric audio coding tools. The by now widely spread aacPlus format, which is the successor of AAC, is based on a flexible approach of employing parametric tools such as Spectral Band Replication (SBR) and Parametric Stereo (PS) in combination with a waveform coder (AAC).
This presentation will give a quick tutorial on perceptual audio coding including an overview of how the last decade's addition of technology has contributed to today's state of the art codecs, and a future outlook in the field of audio coding.

9:40 The future of music software (slides in PDF format)
Ernst Nathorst, CEO of Propellerhead Software
Abstract Now that inexpensive computers are powerful enough to deliver a complete professional audio production and DSP can provide faithful renderings of practically any instrument we can imagine – where do we go from here? What are the next steps that music software needs to take in order to serve musicians better than today?

10:20 The future of music on mobile devices
Staffan Ljung, Strategic Product Manager for Music, Ericsson
Abstract Mobile music is arguably the most requested service by end consumers currently. The sales of mobile music has during the last 2 years had a tremendous impact on the over all digital music sales and the business is just taking its first steps out from the starting blocks.
However, we need to remember that this is still an immature business where stakeholders eventually need to adapt their business models in order to ensure market growth. In all business it would me a major mistake not to listen to what the end consumer expects wants and needs. The end user experience is a focus area where I think that most players in this segment have a lot of improvement to do. One part of the user experience is the " in-store" experience, a building brick which constantly is evolving due to a a bigger variety of choice in the stores, more professional recommendation engines, end consumer offerings etc. However the end user experience does not stop once the end consumer has bought a product from the store. Actually you could argue and say that it begins at that exact point in time. Therefore interoperability is one of the key hurdles that needs to be managed over the next years. How is this realised? What have Ericsson learnt out the past years in this area?

11:00 Coffee break

11:20 Independent music production
David Åström, Kocky/Soul Supreme
Abstract After a short presentation of the music I produce, I will discuss how modern music technology, both equipment and distribution, affects the artistic and creative process of music production. Some of the relevant issues in music production will be discussed. How is the role of the producer changing when advanced hardware and software tools are readily available to the consumer? How do different studios choose different equipment setups? How is the relationship between recording musicians and producers affected by advances in music technology?

12:00-13:00 Panel discussion

Each students will:

• Mail a question to the speakers before the Summer School start
• Prepare a question for the panel discussion
  • • Curriculum vitae (max. 1 page)
    • Certified copy of academic degree
    • Summary of the research proposal (max. 2 pages)
    • Tuesday July 3rd, from 17:00 to 1:00: Bring the Noise!, DJ evening at Debaser, free entrance
    • Thursday July 5th at 19:00: Banquet at Rosendals Trädgård with DJ and jam session
    • Friday July 6th from 22:00 to 3:00: Summer Adventure, Club at Debaser, free entrance
    • A kayak tour?
    • A discgolf game?
    • Search for other events in Stockholm during the summer school

    • School:

      • the school oral sessions will take place in lecture room F2 at KTH central campus, as well as coffee breaks.
        Address: Lindstedtsvägen 26 SE-100 44 Stockholm (map)

         

      • the school hands-on sessions will take place in Department of Speech Music and Hearing
        Address: Lindstedtsvägen 24, 100 44 Stockholm (map)

         

    • Lunches: Brazilia restaurant, in the KTH Campus. Here is the menu, if you can Swedish.
      Address: Brinellvägen 64, 100 44 Stockholm (map)

    • Banquet: Rosendals Trädgård, with facilities for organizing a jam session.
      Address: Rosendalsterrassen 12, 115 21 Stockholm (map)

  Sound and Music Computing in Europe, PART 1, Friday July 6th

  The sessions Sound and Music Computing in Europe have been made possible thanks to the contribution by COST IC0601 Action SID - Sonic Interaction Design.  

  Current EU projects in the SMC field

  10:00 VEMUS - Virtual European Music School, Anders Askenfelt
  10:15 CLOSED - Closing the Loop of Sound Evaluation and Design, Pietro Polotti
  10:30 BrainTuning - Tuning the Brain for Music, Roberto Bresin
  10:45 EmCAP - Emergent Cognition through Active Perception, Hendrik Purwins
  11:00 TAI-CHI - Tangible Acoustic Interfaces for Computer-Human Interaction, Gualtiero Volpe
  11:15 Mobile Life, Lalya Gaye

  Sound and Music Computing in Europe, PART 2, Friday July 6th

  The sessions Sound and Music Computing in Europe have been made possible thanks to the contribution by COST IC0601 Action SID - Sonic Interaction Design.  

  The near Future

  11:45 A SMC Roadmap, Nicola Bernardini
  12:00 COST IC0601 Action SID - Sonic Interaction Design, Nicola Bernardini
  12:15 INVITED TALK: Sound Quality: A Consultant Perspective ( slides in PDF format)
  Romain Haettel, ÅF-Ingemansson AB
  Abstract The quality of sound generated in consumer products is part of the attributes that communicate the total product quality to the customer. Known examples are door closing sounds for cars and sound and tactile quality of knobs, levers and other controls for handling the product. The sound quality aspect is not necessarily received consciously. The presentation gives some examples of practical sound quality development.

  Application

  A maximum of 20 students will be admitted to the school. The candidates will be evaluated by the teachers and the application should include the following documents in pdf format:

  Students have to send their applications to Roberto Bresin before May 1st. Notification of acceptance will be given no later than May 10th.

  For people not wishing to make research presentations during the school, a brief curriculum vitae is sufficient and the deadline for application is May 15th.

  These people should also send their applications to Roberto Bresin.

  Registration Fee

  The regular registration fee is 300 €. This fee also covers the costs for lunch and various evening social events.

  The registration fee for students is 200 €. This fee also covers the costs for lunch and various evening social events.

  The deadline for registration is May 31st.

  NEW! Please find payment instructions here.

  Social events

  • Banquet, Thursday July 5th: Rosendals Trädgård
  • A kayak tour?
  • Search for other events in Stockholm during the summer school

  Venue

  • School:

    • the school oral sessions will take place in lecture room F2 at KTH central campus, as well as coffee breaks.
      Address: Lindstedtsvägen 26 SE-100 44 Stockholm (map)

    • the school hands-on sessions will take place in Department of Speech Music and Hearing
      Address: Lindstedtsvägen 24, 100 44 Stockholm (map)

  • Lunches: Quantum restaurant, in the KTH Campus. Here is the menu, if you can Swedish.
    Address: Osquldas väg 4, 100 44 Stockholm (map)

  • Banquet: Rosendals Trädgård, with facilities for organizing a jam session.
    Address: Rosendalsterrassen 12, 115 21 Stockholm (map)

  Traveling and Accommodation

  Participants will have to arrange their own travel and accommodation.

  We advise you to book accomodation early as the first week of July is very busy in Stockholm.

  Booking services
  Stockholmtown.com
  Visit Stockholm
  Stockholm budget accomodation

  Use hitta.se to look up the location. The summer school will take place at Lindstedtsvägen 24. The service is in Swedish, but is easy to use. "Vad söker du?" means "what do you look for". Type in name, company or telephone number. The second field "Var?" means "Where", and here you type in address. Use "street 'street number' stockholm". You only need to fill out one field.

  Camping

  Close to summer school
  Östermalms Camping, just 5 minutes walk away.

  Less central
  From www.visit-stockholm.com, all are quite far from the school.

  Bed and breakfast/Hostels

  Close to summer school
  Bed & Breakfast
  Rehnsgatan 21
  Tel: +46815 28 38
  Sleeping halls or single-rooms.
  hitta.se

  City Backpackers
  Upplandsgatan 2 A
  Tel: +46820 69 20
  2-, 4- or 8-bed rooms
  E-mail: city.backpackers@swipnet.se
  www.citybackpackers.se
  hitta.se

  Columbus Hotell och Vandrarhem
  Tjärhovsgatan 11
  Tel: +468644 17 17
  2-, 4- or 6-bed rooms
  Getting there: Subway to Medborgarplatsen, Bus 46, 48, 52.
  hitta.se

  Hotel Mitt i City
  Västmannagatan 13
  Tel:+46821 76 30
  Sleeping halls, 12 girls/18 boys or single-rooms.
  hitta.se

  Långholmen Vandrarhem och Hotell
  Gamla kronohäktet
  Tel: +468668 05 10
  Getting there: Subway to Hornstull or Bus 40.
  www.langholmen.com
  hitta.se

  Less central
  Bredängs vandrarhem
  Stora sällskapets väg 51
  Tel: +46897 62 00, 97 70 71
  2- or 4-bed rooms.
  Getting there: Subway to Bredäng, short walk (5 min).
  hitta.se

  Solna Vandrarhem
  Enköpingsvägen 16
  Tel: +468655 00 55
  Getting there: Subway to Solna Centrum, bus 505 (10 min) to Råstahem.
  www.solna-vandrarhem.se
  hitta.se

  Ängby Camping
  Blackebergsvägen 24
  Tel: +46837 04 20
  Cottages. 4 beds in each.
  Getting there: Subway to Ängbyplan, short walk (5 min)
  hitta.se

  Hotels

  Close to summer school
  Art Hotel, Johannesgatan 12
  Stureparkens gästvåning, Sturegatan 58
  Elite Hotel Stockholm Plaza, Birger Jarlsgatan 29
  Rex Hotel, Luntmakargatan 73
  Hellsten Hotel, Luntmakargatan 68
  Hotel Tapto, Jungfrugatan 57
  Hotell Arcadia, Körsbärsvägen 1

  
  
  
  

Genova 2008

Summer School in Sound and Music Computing 2008

This Summer School is organized by Casa Paganini - InfoMus Lab in Genova, Italy, with the goal of promoting interdisciplinary education and research in the field of Sound and Music Computing (SMC). The School is aimed at graduate students working on their Master or PhD thesis, but it is open to any person carrying out research in this field.

This is the fourth SMC Summer School. The first two were organized by the European Project Coordination Action IST-FET S2S² (Sound to Sense – Sense to Sound) in Genova (2005) and Barcelona (2006). Last year the Summer School took place in Stockholm.

Teachers / Scientific Committee

• Nicola Bernardini (Conservatory of Padova)
• Antonio Camurri (University of Genova)
• Roberto Doati (Conservatory of Genova)
• Federico Avanzini (University of Padova)
• Giovanni De Poli (University of Padova)
• Goffredo Haus (University of Milano)
• Alexander Jensenius (University of Oslo)
• Ben Knapp (Queens University of Belfast)
• Marc Leman (Ghent University)
• Barbara Mazzarino (University of Genoa)
• Augusto Sarti (Politecnico di Milano)
• Uwe Seifert (University of Koln)
• Stefania Serafin (Aalborg University Copenhagen)
• Xavier Serra (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)
• Gualtiero Volpe (University of Genova)

Academic Program

• 6 hours of lectures by Xavier Serra on "Current Technologies and Trends in Sound Synthesis and Description".
• 6 hours of seminars by Antonio Camurri, Gualtiero Volpe, Marc Leman and Stefania Serafin.
• 3 hours of oral presentations by the participating students and discussions on their research work with the committee/teachers.
• Poster presentations by the participating students during coffee breaks (1 hour every day of the School).
• 6 hours of hands-on activities by the participating students in collaboration with the committee/teachers of the School.

This year the SMC Summer School is held in connection with the NIME08 Intl. Conference. The participating students will have free access to the NIME Workshops on June 4 and June 8, including oral presentations and discussions by experts from industries and by leaders of EU funded projects in the field of Sound and Music Computing. The participating students will also benefit of the reduced student fee for admission at the NIME08 Conference (June 4-7).

Lectures are designed to be of interest to any graduate student or researcher in the field of Sound and Music Computing. The topics chosen for this year are Gesture and Music - Embodied Music Cognition, Mobile Music Systems and Active Music Listening, relevant topics in our research fields, which have particular methodologies and research strategies. The lectures will present these particular methodologies and their application in music related problems.

All the participating students will give short presentations on their current research during a speed-talk of four minutes. The emphasis will be given on research questions and particularly on methodological issues related to their research project. Students will receive a written feedback from the teachers that should be useful for the continuation of their research.

All the participating students will present a poster about their PhD work. Posters will be on show for all the duration of the Summer School, with discussions during coffee breaks.

All students will work on mini-projects focusing on the themes of the Summer School. Results of the mini-projects will be presented on the final day of the School. Mini-projects will give the opportunity for hands-on activities such as testing software tools or planning of experiments. The organisers will prepare materials for small projects involving the EyesWeb XMI open software platform (www.eyesweb.org) on the topics of the school.

Lectures by Xavier Serra

On the first lecture we will briefly overview the research in Sound and Music Computing by reviewing some historical references and by identifying some current challenges. The second lecture will present some topics on sound synthesis and processing and the last lecture will go over the topic of sound and music description. The lectures will try to explain the technological and conceptual ties that exist between some of the current trends in sound generation for music applications and the techniques for content based sound retrieval. Quite a number of the techniques being worked on for sound retrieval come from the field of sound synthesis and at the same time the new developments in retrieval are being applied and are inspiring new directions in the development of sound generation systems. There will be a special emphasis on the ties between gesture and sound, the current trend towards embodied cognition approaches in sound analysis and synthesis and the current technological possibilities for developing active listening applications. To explain all this examples from the work carried out at the Music Technology Group will be used, such as the research on spectral based concatenative synthesis and on sound and music retrieval. Also the work on the freesound.org sound community will be presented, showing the potential that this open and shared resource has for the research on sound retrieval and for experimenting with new sound generation systems.

• Sound and Music Computing Research: Historical references [slides, references].
• Sound and Music Computing Research: Trends and challenges [slides].
• Sound Synthesis and Processing [slides].
• Sound and Music Description [slides].

Seminars

The school program includes three seminars:

• The first one, by Antonio Camurri and Gualtiero Volpe, is on Expression and Emotion in Non-verbal Full-body Gesture. It will discuss the role and the impact of emotional, expressive non-verbal gestural communication in active listening of sound and music content. The presentation will start from the early systems developed at InfoMus Lab in the '90s up to the research challenges currently addressed in the EU-ICT Project SAME (Sound and Music for Everyone, Everyday, Everywhere, Every way).
• The second one, by Marc Leman, focuses on Embodied Music Cognition. Modern digital media tend to handle music as encoded physical energy, while the human way of dealing with music is based on beliefs, intentions, interpretations, experiences, evaluations, and significations. How can this gap be closed? What kind of mediation is needed to bridge the gap? And how can engineers, psychologists, brain scientists, and musicologists contribute to this? What would be a good approach in handling these questions? This presentation will offer a framework for dealing with the above questions.
• The third one, by Stefania Serafin, will discuss Sonic Interaction Design and Multimodal Perception. The talk will illustrate several situations in which interactive auditory feedback affects our perception of tactile and visual cues, and describe how such interactions among the senses can be utilized when designing interactive products [slides].

Students' posters and speed talks

• Vinoo Alluri, University of Jyvaskyla, [poster] [slides]
• Ilaria Boeddu, University of Genova, [slides]
• Anne-Marie Burns, INRIA, [poster] [slides]
• Angelo Comino, [poster] [slides]
• Ryan Jordan, Goldsmiths University of London, [poster] [slides]
• Chris Kiefer, University of Sussex, [poster] [slides]
• Boye Riis jr., University of Oslo, [poster] [slides]
• Gerard Roma, Pompeu Fabra University, [poster] [slides]
• Anne-Marie Skriver Hansen, Aalborg University, [poster] [slides]

Registration and Information

Register here. Registration deadline: May 15, 2008.

Students are requested to submit their posters on or before the registration deadline. The regular registration fee is 200 €. This fee also covers the costs for lunch and various evening social events. The registration fee for students is 150 €. This fee also covers the costs for lunch and various evening social events. Payment will be cash at the registration desk.

For more information on the program and on how to apply, please contact: smc08@casapaganini.org

Porto 2009

Interacting with sounds of Porto

2009 Summer School in Sound and Music Computing & SID Training School on Interactions with Environmental Sounds

Casa Da Música , Porto, Portugal, July 18-21, 2009

The 2009 Sound and Music Computing Summer School will be organized as a Training School of the SID COST Action. The theme of this summer school is Interacting with Sounds of Porto. This summer school will explore the potential of recording, processing, sharing and interacting with city sounds.

This is the fifth SMC Summer School (after the Genova and Barcelona editions funded by the European Coordination Action IST-FET S2S² and later editions in Stockholm and Genova again) and the second Training School of the COST Action on Sonic Interaction Design. It will take place just before the 6th Sound and Music Computing Conference.

This Summer School aims at giving an opportunity to young researchers interested in the field of Sound and Music Computing to showcase their ideas, learn new skills and work with senior researchers. The School will cater to suits of different student backgrounds. If your background is an Art, Sound/Music recording, Design, Computer Science, etc., there will be something new for you to learn at this Summer School.

There will be a selection of participants and we welcome applications of students from different backgrounds and will foster scientific and artistic cross-fertilization.

Academic program

During 4 days, the program will include lectures, as well as hands-on practical sessions under the supervision of tutors who will provide one-to-one mentoring on artistic and/or scientific projects focused on interactions with sounds that reflect the city of Porto and its activities.

Speed talks and poster sessions will also be organized for students to give an overview and receive feedback on their current research, and to foster scientific cross-fertilization.

The summer school will include 3 main lectures:

1. Design of new interfaces for musical expression. This lecture will review existing examples of novel interfaces for musical expression (also known as gestural controllers or control surfaces), as well as the various sensing technologies used in these devices. We will also discuss ways to design mapping strategies between interface output variables and sound synthesis input variables and approaches to the design of novel interfaces and digital musical instruments. Course material.
2. Registering the soundscape. This lecture will present basic aesthetic, technical, and cultural aspects of audio field recording, interactive approaches to sound design with environmental sounds, and the nature of the roles that soundscape composition can play in our lives.
3. Sound edition, description and retrieval, social networks. Present current technologies for sound edition, description and retrieval, and introduce students to the use of the Freesound.org platform with which they will edit, tag and share their sound recordings. (Freesound.org).

Preliminary schedule

Course material

Lecture 1:

E. R. Miranda and M. M. Wanderley. 2006. New Digital Musical Instruments: Control and Interaction Beyond the Keyboard. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions Inc. ISBN: 0-89579-585-X

Team

Coordination

• Emilia Gómez (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)
• Fabien Gouyon (INESC Porto, local coordinator)

Teachers

• Marcelo Wanderley, Input Devices and Music Interaction Laboratory -
  CIRMMT - Schulich School of Music, McGill University (lecture 1).
  
  Marcelo M. Wanderley has published several book chapters and papers in various areas related to new interfaces for musical expression and was the Chair of the 2003 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME03). In 2006, he co-authored (with Eduardo R. Miranda) the textbook “New Digital Musical Instruments: Control and Interaction Beyond the Keyboard”, A-R Editions, the first comprehensive reference on this area. He is currently Associate Professor in Music Technology at the Schulich School of Music, McGill University, Montreal, Québec, Canada.
  
• Joel Chabade, President, Electronic Music Foundation (lecture 2)
  
  Composer, author Joel Chadabe is a pioneer in the development of interactive music systems. His music has been performed in New York, Paris, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Venice, Rome, Amsterdam, Berlin, Linz, Stockholm, San Francisco, London, and other cities worldwide; and recorded on EMF Media, Deep Listening, and other labels. He is the author of 'Electric Sound', a history of electronic music. His articles have been published in leading journals. As president of Intelligent Music, he oversaw the first publications of interactive music software. He has received grants from NEA, New York State Council on the Arts, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Fulbright Commission, and other organizations, and he is the recipient of the SEAMUS 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award.
  
  Mr. Chadabe is currently Professor Emeritus at State University of New York, faculty at Manhattan School of Music, visiting faculty at NYU; and president of Electronic Music Foundation.
  
• Xavier Serra, Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (lecture 3)
  
  Xavier Serra (Barcelona, 1959) is the head of the Music Technology Group of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. After a multidisciplinary academic education he obtained a PhD in Computer Music from Stanford University in 1989 with a dissertation on the spectral processing of musical sounds that is considered a key reference in the field. His research interests cover the understanding, modeling and generation of musical signals by computational means, with a balance between basic and applied research and approaches from both scientific/technological and humanistic/artistic disciplines. Dr. Serra is very active in promoting initiatives in the field of Sound and Music Computing at the local and international levels, being editor and reviewer of a number of journals, conferences and research programs of the European Commission, and also giving lectures on current and future challenges of the field. He is the principal investigator of more than 15 major research projects funded by public and private institutions, the author of 31 patents and of more than 50 research publications.
  

Jury/Scientific Committee/Tutors

• To be announced

Application

A maximum of 20 students will be admitted to the school.

Interested candidates are asked to propose a project they intend to carry out (either alone or in small groups) during the summer school and present it at the end. Project proposals must be related to the general theme of interacting with sounds of the city of Porto. A selection of projects will be made by the Scientific Committee. Participants may be asked to modify slightly their projects. After completion of all projects, the Scientific Committee will proceed to an evaluation and the best project will receive a prize during the Sound and Music Computing Conference (23-25 July 2009) in the Casa da Música.

Applications should include the following documents in pdf format:

• Curriculum vitae (max. 1 page)
• Certified copy of academic degree
• Short description of the student research interest and motivation to participate, including a specific project proposal for the summer school (main theme: Interacting with sounds of Porto) (max. 5 pages)

Admitted students are requested to bring a poster at the summer school summarizing their research project.

For additional information, please use this form.

Students have to send their applications before April 24th 2009. For sending your application, please use this form.

Notification of acceptance will be given no later than May 12th.

There will be a registration fee to the Summer School (to be determined). The COST Action IC0601 on Sonic Interaction Design will provide financial help to a selection of students under the form of individual fixed grants of 500 Euros (preference will be given to students whose proposal projects best fit SID topics -see here).

Summer School students are also encouraged to attend the Sound and Music Computing Conference (23-25th July 2009). There will be special (lower) conference fees for Summer School students.

Related links

• Sons de Barcelona
• Urban Tapestries
• Ear to the Earth
• Davos Soundscape
• GPS Drawing
• BioMapping
• Sonic Panoramas
• Hearing Helsinki
• Improve software
• Stadt Musik

Travelling and accomodation

Participants will have to arrange their own travel and accommodation.
For more info on special rates hotels, traveling tips and local information, please see here.