Music Information Retrieval (MlR) is the interdisciplinary science of retrieving information from music and includes influences from different areas, like music perception and cognition, music analysis, signal processing, music indexing and information retrieval [Futrelle & Downie, 2003]. To produce the most efficient MlR systems, test-beds are commonly used to test different combinations of parameters against each other. The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the composition of algorithms for MlR systems by constructing an interface that could form part of a test-bed. It differs from other interfaces and frameworks that are used in MlR test-beds because it is focused on small scale test-beds. MIRMaid is an acronym for Music Information Retrieval Modular aid and is an interface that allows different content based retrieval tasks to be compared against each other to find optimal combinations of retrieval parameters for specialised problem domains. The dissertation describes the process of how the MIRMaid interface was developed, modified and refined. A big challenge was to design the user experiments in a way that considered potential users of the interface while using the test subjects I had at my disposal. I decided to use the simplest queries to highlight basic similarities between novice and potential expert users. The performance of the interface was judged by user ratings on a questionnaire. The interface performed reasonably well with expert users and novice users. Despite these results there were a few interesting observations that were returned from the user experiments related to the experiment design and the task explanations. Some suggestions are also provided for extending the interface to allow it to be used with other types of data. The possibility is also investigated for using the interface as a tool for simplifying the process of integrating modules from different sources.

Traditionally, musicians make use of a metronome for timing training. A typical metronome, whether hardware or software emulation, will provide the musician with a regular, metrical click to use as a temporal guide. The musician will synchronise his or her actions to the metronome click, thereby producing music that is in time. With regular usage, a musician’s sense of time will gradually improve. To investigate potential benefits offered by computer-assisted instruction, an Alternate Timing Training System was designed and a prototype software implementation developed. The system employed alternative training methods and exercises beyond those offered by a standard metronome. An experiment was conducted with a sample of musicians that attempted to measure and compare improvements in timing accuracy using a standard metronome and the Alternate Timing Training System. The software was also made available for public download and evaluated by a number of musicians who subsequently completed an online survey. A number of limitations were identified in the experiment, including too short a training period, too small a sample size and subjects that already had a highly developed sense of time. Whilst the results of the experiment were inconclusive, analysis of survey results indicated a significant preference for the Alternate Timing Training System over a standard metronome as an effective means of timing training.

Recent studies have shown that the social context in which people play digital multiplayer games has an effect on their experience. Whether co-players are in the same location (―co-located‖) or in different locations (―mediated‖) changes how they interact with the game and with one another. We set out to explore how these complex psychological dynamics played out in a collaborative multiplayer game, since most of the research to date has been focused on competitive gameplay scenarios. To this end, we designed a two-player puzzle-based gaming apparatus called COLAB, implementing specific features that have been proven to foster collaboration and preclude competition between players. The independent variable was player location; the dependent variable was game experience, as measured by the Social Presence in Gaming Questionnaire and the Game Experience Questionnaire, two comprehensive self-report instruments. We found a significant difference in the game experiences of players collaborating in the same location versus players collaborating in different locations. Specifically, co-located players of the collaborative game experienced significantly higher scores for negative experience than mediated players did, while mediated players experienced significantly higher levels of three key game-experience measures: positive affect, immersion, and flow.