Ambientes virtuais colaborativos de composição musical têm apresentado expressivo crescimento, acompanhando a tendência de disponibilização de serviços de apoio a atividades colaborativas na Internet. Tais plataformas fornecem um meio para que pessoas possam compartilhar uma experiência musical em conjunto remotamente. A atividade de composição musical, entretanto, é influenciada por diversos fatores subjetivos de origem pessoal, social e cultural; e encontrar pessoas com objetivos convergentes para colaborar em uma criação musical em conjunto têm se demonstrado como uma tarefa complexa e desgastante. Neste contexto, esta dissertação apresenta uma forma automatizada para aproximar pessoas com objetivos e preferências musicais compatíveis para colaborar entre si. Utilizando técnicas da área de sistemas de recomendação, este trabalho propõe uma abordagem híbrida de recomendação de parceiros – baseada em filtragem colaborativa e por conteúdo –, em ambientes colaborativos de composição musical. Ao longo deste trabalho, os principais conceitos e características da abordagem são apresentados, assim como um roteiro de sua implantação em um sistema real, o CODES – um ambiente de suporte à prototipação musical voltado à leigos. / Collaborative environments for musical composition have grown significantly lately, following the current tendency of providing services that support cooperative activities on the Internet. Such platforms provide a common way for people to share a musical experience remotely. However, the music composition activity is influenced by subjective factors of personal, social and cultural backgrounds. And the task of finding people with the same goals to collaborate with on a musical creation has been shown very complex and overwhelming. In this context, this dissertation explores an automated approach to approximate people with compatible objectives and musical preferences to compose together. Using techniques from the recommender systems’ area, it proposes a hybrid approach, based both on collaborative filtering and content-based recommendation, for recommending partners in collaborative environments for musical composition. Throughout this work, the key concepts, principles and characteristics of the approach are presented, as well as the details of its implementation in CODES, a real environment to support music creation by novices.

Researchers have investigated harnessing computers as a tool to aid in the composition of music for over 70 years. In major part, such research has focused on creating algorithms to work with pitches and rhythm, which has resulted in a selection of sophisticated systems. Although the musical possibilities of these systems are vast, they are not directly considering another important characteristic of sound. Timbre can be defined as all the sound attributes, except pitch, loudness and duration, which allow us to distinguish and recognize that two sounds are dissimilar. This feature plays an essential role in combining instruments as it involves mixing instrumental properties to create unique textures conveying specific sonic qualities. Within this thesis, we explore harnessing techniques for the analysis and control of instrumental timbre and timbral combinations. This thesis begins with investigating the link between musical timbre, auditory perception and psychoacoustics for sounds emerging from instrument mixtures. It resulted in choosing to use verbal descriptors of timbral qualities to represent auditory perception of instrument combination sounds. Therefore, this thesis reports on the developments of methods and tools designed to automatically retrieve and identify perceptual qualities of timbre within audio files, using specific musical acoustic features and artificial intelligence algorithms. Different perceptual experiments have been conducted to evaluate the correlation between selected acoustics cues and humans' perception. Results of these evaluations confirmed the potential and suitability of the presented approaches. Finally, these developments have helped to design a perceptually-orientated generative system harnessing aspects of artificial intelligence to combine sampled instrument notes. The findings of this exploration demonstrate that an artificial intelligence approach can help to harness the perceptual aspect of instrumental timbre and timbral combinations. This investigation suggests that established methods of measuring timbral qualities, based on a diverse selection of sounds, also work for sounds created by combining instrument notes. The development of tools designed to automatically retrieve and identify perceptual qualities of timbre also helped in designing a comparative scale that goes towards standardising metrics for comparing timbral attributes. Finally, this research demonstrates that perceptual characteristics of timbral qualities, using verbal descriptors as a representation, can be implemented in an intelligent computing system designed to combine sampled instrument notes conveying specific perceptual qualities.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-08-13T14:50:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2014-03-17Bitstream added on 2014-08-13T17:59:51Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000771815.pdf: 2531938 bytes, checksum: 8f85c7431b30ffa13ad9210016d31630 (MD5) / Este trabalho trata da influência do pensamento eletroacústico sobre a obra para piano de György Ligeti do período de 1976 a 2001. Visamos a demonstrar nossa hipótese de que, embora distantes cronologicamente dos anos em que o compositor trabalhou no Estúdio de Música Eletrônica de Colônia, tais composições foram impactadas por essa experiência. Além disso, defendemos que este aspecto também resultou em novos estilemas pianísticos e, consequentemente, na expansão escritural do repertório para piano. Baseamo-nos em escritos de Ligeti (1958-1959, 1960, 1980, 1993, 1996), bem como nas ideias de Michel (1995), Toop (1999) e Delaplace e, por meio da análise dessas ideias e estudo do repertório composto por Ligeti no referido período, pudemos verificar que existe, de fato, uma relação estreita, apesar de não aparente, entre a experiência eletrônica deste compositor e sua escritura derradeira para piano / This thesis discusses the influence of György Ligeti’s electroacoustic thinking on his piano work from 1976 to 2001. Our goal is to demonstrate that the years when the composer worked at the electronic music studio in Cologne had a strong impact on his later compositions, even though these two periods are chronologically distant from each another. We also argue that this factor resulted in new stylistic elements and as a consequence in the scriptural expansion of his pianistic repertoire. On the basis of Ligeti’s writings (1958-1959, 1960, 1980, 1993, 1996), as well as of Michel’s (1995), Toop’s (1999) and Delaplace’s, and through an analysis of their ideas and a study of Ligeti’s repertoire between 1976-2001, we were able to find that there is actually a veiled but close relationship between Ligeti’s electronic experience and his later set of piano works

Made available in DSpace on 2014-08-13T14:50:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2014-03-14Bitstream added on 2014-08-13T17:59:50Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000772170.pdf: 3648975 bytes, checksum: 37edcaf65c22f27c61e0f83df94c0d2e (MD5) / La musique en temps réel est devenu un genre de la musique électroacoustique le plus exploré par les compositeurs d’aujourd’hui. Les modes de interations entre la partie électronique e les instruments sont l’un des principaux aspects recherchés par tout ceux qui s’occupent du genre. Dans la relation d’interation entre l’instrumentistes e la partir electronique, il faut considérés quels sont les informations captés dans “le monde exterior”, de quelle façon ces informations seront captés e, de quelle manière seront utilisés pour interférer dans la partie électronique. Le flux d’informations qui circule entre les parties instrumentales et électroniques est utilisé afin de fournir l’interation entre nombreux aspects du son como le timbre, le temps, et les nuances, par exemple. Cependant, l’aspect harmonique semble être le plus complexe pour manipuler de façon interative. En ce sens, cette recherche a trouvé une manière de manipuler le donné harmonique au milieu de la musique électronique en temps réel, en considerant que les reseux harmoniques de Pousseur pourrait étre une intéressant outil compositionel a telle fin. Pour cela, nous on prèsente le processus de la mise en place des réseaux harmoniques de Pousseur comme algorithme informatique realisé dans le language de programmation audio numérique SuperCollider, sutenu par une revision thèorique du sujet. En cherchant une interaction qui extrayait au maximun les potentialités harmoniques des réseaux harmoniques de Pousseur avec les informations captés de la partie instrumentale, on s’occupe a la discussion sur le concepts de consonance et dissonance cognitive e de comment les calcules de rugosité de Helmholtz et Plomp & Levelt pourraient être utilisé comme un outil de classification des resultats harmoniques des réseaux de Pousseur, quant à son niveau de tension harmonique. Bref, on present ... / A música em tempo real tem se tornado um gênero da música eletroacústica cada vez mais explorado pelos compositores da atualidade. As formas de interação entre a dimensão instrumental e a eletroacústica são um dos principais aspectos investigados por todos que se dedicam ao gênero. Na relação de interação entre instrumentistas e a dimensão eletroacústica, devem-se considerar quais são as informações captadas no “mundo exterior”, de que modo tais informação serão captadas e, de que forma serão utilizadas para interferir na dimensão eletroacústica. O fluxo de informações que circula entre as dimensões instrumentais e eletroacústicas tem sido utilizado a fim de propiciar a interação entre diversos aspectos do som como o timbre, o tempo e a dinâmica, por exemplo. Porém, o dado harmônico parece ser o mais complexo de manipular de forma interativa. Nesse sentido, esta investigação buscou uma forma de manipular o dado harmônico em meio a música eletroacústica em tempo real, considerando que as redes harmônicas de Pousseur poderiam ser uma instigante ferramenta composicional para tal finalidade. Para tal, apresentamos o processo de implementação das redes harmônicas de Pousseur como algoritmo computacional realizado na linguagem de programação para áudio digital SuperCollider, suportado por uma revisão teórica do assunto. Buscando um interação que extraísse ao máximo as potencialidades harmônico-relacionais das redes harmônicas de Pousseur com as informações captadas da dimensão instrumental, dedicamo-nos à discussão sobre os conceitos de consonância e dissonância cognitiva, e de como os cálculos de rugosidade de Helmholtz e Plomp & Levelt poderiam ser utilizados como uma ferramenta de classificação dos resultados harmônicos das redes de Pousseur, quanto ao seu nível de tensão harmônica. Por fim, apresentamos os resultados desse processo em exemplo...

This thesis presents an investigation into developing musical systems with an Unconventional Computing substrate. Computer musicians have found it difficult to access the field of Unconventional Computing, which is likely due to its resource-intensive and complex nature. However, ongoing research is establishing the myxomycete Physarum polycephalum as a universally-accessible and versatile biological computing substrate. As such, the organism is a potential gateway for computer musicians to begin experimenting with aspects of Unconventional Computing. Physarum polycephalum, in its vegetative plasmodium form, is an amorphous unicellular organism that can respond with natural parallelism to the environmental conditions that surround it. This thesis explores the challenges and opportunities related to developing musical systems with Physarum polycephalum. As this area of inquiry is in its infancy, the research took inspiration from a common approach in Unconventional Computing: a journey of exploration and discovery. This journey consisted of a selection of waypoints that provided direction while allowing the research to explore applications of Physarum polycephalum in order to establish how it may be useful in Computer Music. These waypoints guided the research from adapting established prototypes for musical application to developing purpose-made musical demonstrators for use outside of the laboratory. Thus, the thesis reports on a series of Computer Music systems that explore one or more features of Physarum polycephalum's behaviour and physiology. First, the text presents an approach to algorithmic composition that exploits the organism's ability to form and reconfigure graph-like structures. Next, the thesis reports on systems that harness the plasmodium's electrical potential oscillations for sound synthesis and compositional tools. Finally, the thesis presents musical devices that encompass living plasmodium as electrical components. Where applicable, the thesis includes artefacts from demonstrations of these systems, some of which were developed in collaboration with a composer. The findings from this journey demonstrate that Physarum polycephalum is an appropriate substrate for computer musicians wanting to explore Unconventional Computing approaches creatively. Although Physarum polycephalum is relatively robust as a biological substrate, several obstacles arose during this project. This research addressed such obstacles by reviewing and selecting approaches that maintained the organism's accessibility to computer musicians. As a result, the work suggests methods for developing systems with the organism that are practical for the average music technologist and also beneficial to the wider group of scientists investigating Physarum polycephalum for other purposes.

abstract: The tradition of building musical robots and automata is thousands of years old. Despite this rich history, even today musical robots do not play with as much nuance and subtlety as human musicians. In particular, most instruments allow the player to manipulate timbre while playing; if a violinist is told to sustain an E, they will select which string to play it on, how much bow pressure and velocity to use, whether to use the entire bow or only the portion near the tip or the frog, how close to the bridge or fingerboard to contact the string, whether or not to use a mute, and so forth. Each one of these choices affects the resulting timbre, and navigating this timbre space is part of the art of playing the instrument. Nonetheless, this type of timbral nuance has been largely ignored in the design of musical robots. Therefore, this dissertation introduces a suite of techniques that deal with timbral nuance in musical robots. Chapter 1 provides the motivating ideas and introduces Kiki, a robot designed by the author to explore timbral nuance. Chapter 2 provides a long history of musical robots, establishing the under-researched nature of timbral nuance. Chapter 3 is a comprehensive treatment of dynamic timbre production in percussion robots and, using Kiki as a case-study, provides a variety of techniques for designing striking mechanisms that produce a range of timbres similar to those produced by human players. Chapter 4 introduces a machine-learning algorithm for recognizing timbres, so that a robot can transcribe timbres played by a human during live performance. Chapter 5 introduces a technique that allows a robot to learn how to produce isolated instances of particular timbres by listening to a human play an examples of those timbres. The 6th and final chapter introduces a method that allows a robot to learn the musical context of different timbres; this is done in realtime during interactive improvisation between a human and robot, wherein the robot builds a statistical model of which timbres the human plays in which contexts, and uses this to inform its own playing. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Media Arts and Sciences 2016

The purpose of this study is to investigate the occurrences of electroacoustic content in and its relation to cinematic film. Key research questions include: What pioneering techniques and aesthetic positions used by creators of early electroacoustic music have found their way into mainstream cinema? Where and when have they been developed? In which films do they appear, and how are they distributed among film genres? The findings of this study assert the idea that many techniques that are part of sound design of contemporary cinematic film (the process and result of mixing and manipulating sounds) come directly from pioneers of electroacoustic music. Electroacoustic techniques and aesthetics play an important role in the history of sound film in making fundamental contributions to production processes, the relation between directors and sound makers, and film sound theory. On an aesthetic level, electroacoustic music in film has reformed the role of sound in film: a film score can contain 'noise', while speech and sound effects can actually serve as music. The findings also assert that electroacoustic techniques and aesthetics can be found in cinematic film from the beginning of sound film in the late 1920s. Once established, techniques have largely remained the same, regardless of the carrier media and their transformation from analog to digital: modern, digital techniques are refinements of their analog predecessors. Aesthetics have developed along with techniques, albeit much slower; their potential and exploration is far from being exhausted. The use of electroacoustic content for a particular element of film sound is not unusual and often genre-specific (for example in science fiction and thriller). However fully electroacoustic scores are rare. A portfolio of selected original compositions by the author complements this study. Acoustic and electroacoustic pieces for film and multimedia highlight different aesthetics, techniques and practices of film sound and film music.

Ambientes virtuais colaborativos de composição musical têm apresentado expressivo crescimento, acompanhando a tendência de disponibilização de serviços de apoio a atividades colaborativas na Internet. Tais plataformas fornecem um meio para que pessoas possam compartilhar uma experiência musical em conjunto remotamente. A atividade de composição musical, entretanto, é influenciada por diversos fatores subjetivos de origem pessoal, social e cultural; e encontrar pessoas com objetivos convergentes para colaborar em uma criação musical em conjunto têm se demonstrado como uma tarefa complexa e desgastante. Neste contexto, esta dissertação apresenta uma forma automatizada para aproximar pessoas com objetivos e preferências musicais compatíveis para colaborar entre si. Utilizando técnicas da área de sistemas de recomendação, este trabalho propõe uma abordagem híbrida de recomendação de parceiros – baseada em filtragem colaborativa e por conteúdo –, em ambientes colaborativos de composição musical. Ao longo deste trabalho, os principais conceitos e características da abordagem são apresentados, assim como um roteiro de sua implantação em um sistema real, o CODES – um ambiente de suporte à prototipação musical voltado à leigos. / Collaborative environments for musical composition have grown significantly lately, following the current tendency of providing services that support cooperative activities on the Internet. Such platforms provide a common way for people to share a musical experience remotely. However, the music composition activity is influenced by subjective factors of personal, social and cultural backgrounds. And the task of finding people with the same goals to collaborate with on a musical creation has been shown very complex and overwhelming. In this context, this dissertation explores an automated approach to approximate people with compatible objectives and musical preferences to compose together. Using techniques from the recommender systems’ area, it proposes a hybrid approach, based both on collaborative filtering and content-based recommendation, for recommending partners in collaborative environments for musical composition. Throughout this work, the key concepts, principles and characteristics of the approach are presented, as well as the details of its implementation in CODES, a real environment to support music creation by novices.

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo apresentar uma revisão bibliográfica de alguns dos principais conceitos acústicos e psicoacústicos associados à audição humana já desenvolvidos na literatura, de Helmholtz aos dias atuais, com foco no órgão da cóclea, relacionando as áreas de física, neurociências e computação musical, bem como aplicações diretamente derivadas de tal revisão. A partir dos cálculos realizados por Couto (COUTO, 2000) de distribuição da pressão sonora no meato acústico externo, foi calculada a pressão sonora relativa e a impedância acústica ao longo do órgão coclear. Também é apresentado um algoritmo de minimização da dissonância sensorial baseado nos modelos de bandas críticas de Cambridge e de Munique. / The present work presents a literature review on some of the most important acoustical and psychoacoustical concepts associated to human hearing, from Helmholtz to the present day, focusing on the cochlea and connecting concepts of physics, neurosciences and computer music, as well as applications directly derived from such concepts. From the sound pressure distribution model developed by Couto (COUTO, 2000), the relative sound pressure and the acoustic impedance along the cochlea were calculated. An algorithm for minimizing sensory dissonance based on Cambridge and Munich models of critical bandwidths is also presented.

Ambientes virtuais colaborativos de composição musical têm apresentado expressivo crescimento, acompanhando a tendência de disponibilização de serviços de apoio a atividades colaborativas na Internet. Tais plataformas fornecem um meio para que pessoas possam compartilhar uma experiência musical em conjunto remotamente. A atividade de composição musical, entretanto, é influenciada por diversos fatores subjetivos de origem pessoal, social e cultural; e encontrar pessoas com objetivos convergentes para colaborar em uma criação musical em conjunto têm se demonstrado como uma tarefa complexa e desgastante. Neste contexto, esta dissertação apresenta uma forma automatizada para aproximar pessoas com objetivos e preferências musicais compatíveis para colaborar entre si. Utilizando técnicas da área de sistemas de recomendação, este trabalho propõe uma abordagem híbrida de recomendação de parceiros – baseada em filtragem colaborativa e por conteúdo –, em ambientes colaborativos de composição musical. Ao longo deste trabalho, os principais conceitos e características da abordagem são apresentados, assim como um roteiro de sua implantação em um sistema real, o CODES – um ambiente de suporte à prototipação musical voltado à leigos. / Collaborative environments for musical composition have grown significantly lately, following the current tendency of providing services that support cooperative activities on the Internet. Such platforms provide a common way for people to share a musical experience remotely. However, the music composition activity is influenced by subjective factors of personal, social and cultural backgrounds. And the task of finding people with the same goals to collaborate with on a musical creation has been shown very complex and overwhelming. In this context, this dissertation explores an automated approach to approximate people with compatible objectives and musical preferences to compose together. Using techniques from the recommender systems’ area, it proposes a hybrid approach, based both on collaborative filtering and content-based recommendation, for recommending partners in collaborative environments for musical composition. Throughout this work, the key concepts, principles and characteristics of the approach are presented, as well as the details of its implementation in CODES, a real environment to support music creation by novices.