• Spelling errors: using modern word processors, there is really no need to have any spelling errors in your documents at all. A few is acceptable, several per page is too much. This will most likely irritate the reader, and your grade will certainly drop.
• Division of words: this has become a huge problem in Norwegian in recent years. As we get
  more influenced by the English language, more people have started spelling words apart. Sometimes this is semantically harmless, other times it ends up being involuntary funny, but it may also change the meaning entirely. Anyways, dividing up words still counts as spelling errors.
• Style: it is always more pleasant to read documents that are well written. I am not a particularly good writer myself, so I am constantly trying to remind myself that it is OK to think about writing as a tool to convey a message. If you are struggling with writing, write shorter sentences. Then check that the sentences make up a logical structure.
• Informal: a term paper is a formal document, like a research paper or a book, and the language used should be formal. Informal language, which is often acceptable in e-mails or a blog post, should be avoided.
• Punctuation: there should be no space before a punctuation mark, and one space after. Parentheses, on the other hand (like this), should have space both before and after. This is really a part of the basics of writing, so I am very to sorry that I have to mention this…
• Layout: a nice looking document will certainly always give a good impression. Receiving poorly formatted documents, e.g. with 1 cm margins, ugly looking and odd-sized fonts, etc., does not help your grade. Remember to use the same font type and size throughout the document.
• Line breaks: use either double line breaks or one line break and indention. Mixing them makes for a chaotic visual impression.

Of course, the most important is the content of the paper, but that is a totally different story. Here I would just come with one advice:

• Clearly state what you want to say, and then say it.

Besides the fact that I personally find it much easier and faster to handle PDF files, there are many reasons why it is not a good idea to send off the originals:

• Compatibility: I am running three OSes (OSX, XP, Ubuntu) and have access to most word processors, so it is very seldom that I can’t open a file. But as the number of widespread text file formats have started to increase recently (with the addition of .docx, .odt, .pages to the old-timers .rtf and .doc), I notice that the issue of file format compatibility is starting to become an issue again for many people.
• Accessibility: there is no point in passing away the source material unless you want people to edit it.
• Layout: opening a .docx file in OpenOffice usually always results in a document that looks differently than it was intended in MS Word
• Pictures: I often see that there are problems with embedded pictures, either they may not be there or formatting and image adjustments may be different than what was intended
• Changes: if the “track changes” function was turned on while writing, all changes will be accessible to the reader. This may not always be a big problem, but there are several examples of where this has been a crucial issue.
• Legal: the state regulations in Norway tell that all public documents should be saved as open formats, either .odt or .pdf. This is a fairly new regulation (1 January 2009), so it has not had a full impact yet, but hopefully it will one day.

Take-away message: never pass around your source material unless you specifically want people to change it (which is not the case with a university term paper, nor an official letter on your institution’s letter head…). Use PDF, please.

eduroam is the secure, world-wide roaming access service developed for the international research and education community. eduroam allows students, researchers and staff from participating institutions to obtain Internet connectivity across campus and when visiting other participating institutions by simply opening their laptop.

Over the last few years I have noticed that more and more institutions in Europe have joined eduroam, and being in Australia at the moment, I am very happy to see that both University of Technology Sydney as well as University of Sydney are also members of the club. Brilliant.

Its a long time ago since I gave up on doing pure audio recordings during conferences. I just never listen to the things I record, mainly because it is too painful to sort out what the different files are. It is just much easier with something visual that you can browse through. Hence if I want to record audio, I record a video to have some visuals to go along with it. The audio result is usually not very good, but having something is better than having nothing.

But I am always uncertain as to whether I should use a small photo camera or a small video recorder. This boils down to whether I want to have decent photos and poor video, or decent video and mediocre photos. Often I have chosen the first, bringing along my small photo camera (currently a Nikon Coolpix S7). This camera is extremely portable and fits nicely into a pocket. The photo quality is not great, but not too bad either. It doesn’t perform very well in low light, and the lens is not particularly wide, but the overall size is a clear winner. The problem, however, is that the video quality is so poor that it only rarely can shown to people later on. So during NIME 2010 in Sydney, I decided to bring my new small video camera (Sanyo Xacti HD-2000) and see how it works as a conference camera, both for pictures and videos.

Here is a quick wrap up of what I have found so far:

• It starts super-fast
• Video quality is (obviously) much, much better than the the Coolpix
• Photo quality is (obviously) poorer than the Coolpix, but the total
  image quality (photo + video) is better
• The shotgun grip is very useful for taking pictures, making it less obvious that I am running around with a camera
• The zoom and low-light features are great for such a small device. Even in poorly lit auditoriums I manage to get a close up of the person talking without too much blurring
• The size of the camera is quite a lot bigger. I do manage to put it in my pocket, but it is not particularly comfortable
• It records HD video directly into MPEG-4 files with H.264 compression, so files can be play back instantly on all systems (compare this to all the mess working with AVCHD files!)
• It is clearly larger than the Coolpix, so I usually put it back in my backpack when not in use

All in all I am quite happy about using the HD-2000 as a conference camera. We’ll see if I cange my mind over the next couple of days.

I don’t mind being without an internet connection, this just primes me for doing other activities. But I notice that having a poor and unreliable connection is frustrating since it interrupts my work-flow. It makes me think about how both my private and professional life is so reliant on having internet access all the time. I choose to think about this as a good lesson on how I should be more careful about not taking connectivity for granted.

• IMRAD = Introduction, Method, Research and Discussion
• PICO = Problem, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome

It seems like PICO comes from clinical practice in medicine. Not sure if this helps music research that much, but I do like the structured approach to organising paper writing.

I am getting ready to travel to Sydney for the upcoming NIME 2010 conference where I am involved in no less than 5 papers:

Glass instruments – from pitch to timbre
Frounberg, I., A. R. Jensenius, and K. T. Innervik (2010)
The paper reports on the development of prototypes of glass instruments. The focus has been on developing acoustic instruments specifically designed for electronic treatment, and where timbral qualities have had priority over pitch. The paper starts with a brief historical overview of glass instruments and their artistic use. Then follows an overview of the glass blowing process. Finally the musical use of the instruments is discussed.

Evaluating the subjective effects of microphone placement on
glass instruments
Jensenius, A. R., K. T. Innervik, and I. Frounberg (2010)
Abstract: We report on a study of perceptual and acoustic features related to the placement of microphones around a custom made glass instrument. Different microphone setups were tested: above, inside and outside the instrument and at different distances. The sounds were evaluated by an expert performer, and further qualitative and quantitative analyses have been carried out. Preference was given to the recordings from microphones placed close to the rim of the instrument, either from the inside or the outside.

Searching for cross-individual relationships between sound
and movement features using an svm classifier
Nymoen, K., K. Glette, S. A. Skogstad, J. Tørresen, and A.
R. Jensenius (2010)
In this paper we present a method for studying relationships between features of sound and features of movement. The method has been tested by carrying out an experiment with people moving an object in space along with short sounds. 3D position data of the object was recorded and several features were calculated from each of the recordings. These features were provided as input to a classifier which was able to classify the recorded actions satisfactorily; particularly when taking into account that the only link between the actions performed by the different subjects were the sound they heard while making the action.

Using ir optical marker based motion capture for exploring
musical interaction
Skogstad, S. A., A. R. Jensenius, and K. Nymoen (2010)
The paper presents a conceptual overview of how optical infrared marker based motion capture systems (IrMoCap) can be used in musical interaction. First we present a review of related work of using IrMoCap for musical control. This is followed by a discussion of possible features which can be exploited. Finally, the question of mapping movement features to sound features is presented and discussed.

Wireless sensor data collection based on zigbee
communication
Torresen, J., E. Renton, and A. R. Jensenius (2010)
This paper presents a comparison of different configurations of a wireless sensor system for capturing human motion. The systems consist of sensor elements which wirelessly transfers motion data to a receiver element. The sensor elements consist of a microcontroller, accelerometer(s) and a radio transceiver. The receiver element consists of a radio receiver connected through a microcontroller to a computer for real time sound synthesis. The wireless transmission between the sensor elements and the receiver element is based on the low rate IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee standard. A configuration with several accelerometers connected by wire to a wireless sensor element is compared to using multi- ple wireless sensor elements with only one accelerometer in each. The study shows that it would be feasable to connect 5-6 accelerometers in the given setups. Sensor data processing can be done in either the receiver element or in the sensor element. For various reasons it can be reasonable to implement some sensor data processing in the sensor element. The paper also looks at how much time that typically would be needed for a simple pre-processing task.

Electronic versions will be available next week.

But first of all, I would like to officially thank IRCAM for putting together the GDIF SpatDIF meeting a couple of weeks ago. We had a great meeting with lots of interesting discussions. The conclusion from the meeting was that many people think that continuing the development process of GDIF and SpatDIF is wortwhile, and also that there are many things in common between the two formats. To create a base for development, I have set up a wiki at our server, called xDIF (which can also be read *DIF) so that other DIFs can join in as well.

To avoid spam in the wiki, user registration has been restricted, so anyone that is interested in contributing need to contact me to get a user account (please do!).

The thesis, software and audio examples are available online.

Abstract:

This dissertation presents a framework for describing and understanding the experience of voices in acousmatic electroacoustic music and related genres. The framework is developed with a phenomenological basis, where the author’s own listening experience has been the main object of study. One component of the framework has been to group aspects that potentially can be attended to into experiential domains based on some common feature, relationship or function. Four vocal experiential domains related to the voice are presented along with three domains not directly related to the voice. For each of these domains, a set of concepts are introduced allowing for qualification and description of features of the experience. The second component of the framework, the maximal-minimal model, is partly described through these domains. This model presents maximal and minimal voice as loosely defined poles constituting end points on a continuum on which experienced voices can be localized. Here, maximal voice, which parallels the informative and clearly articulated speaking voice dominant in the radio medium, is described as the converging fulfillment of seven premises. These premises are seen as partly interconnected conditions related to particular aspects or features of the experience of voice. At the other end of the continuum, minimal voice is defined as a boundary zone between voice and non-voice, a zone which is related to the negative fulfilment of the seven premises. A number of factors are presented that potentially can affect an evaluation of experiences according to the premises, along with musical excerpts that exemplifies different evaluation categories along the continuum. Finally, the two frameworks are applied in an evaluation and description of the author’s experience of Paul Lansky’s Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion.