Music Technology

This semester, I have written a book with AI. I should emphasize the with in the previous sentence, because this has been an experience of co-creation between various large language models (LLMs) and me. This post details my approach to co-writing Sensing Sound and Music and reflects on the process. The need for a book The reason for my AI-based writing experiment was the need for a textbook for the course MUS2640 – Sensing Sound and Music at the University of Oslo. This is an introductory course for the bachelor’s students in our musicology program who want to major in music psychology and/or music technology. These are two distinct directions that are usually taught separately. However, at UiO, we have a strong tradition of combining psychological and technological perspectives on and with music (in the fourMs Lab and at RITMO), so I have argued that we need a foundation course showing the connections between the two disciplines. ...

I am supervising several last-year PhD students this year, and they all have to write a methodology chapter for their thesis. Remember that a methodology chapter is not a methods chapter. While “method” is how you do something, “methodology” is the knowledge (“logy”) of the methods. Still, that requires that you can name your methods and reflect on them. Given that music technologists often work on method development (and related tools) as their core research activity, I see many struggle to describe and reflect on the methods they use. Hence, this little blog post to help people along the way. ...

Meeting some new bachelor’s students today, I had to explain that “music technology” is not a thing, it is a scientific discipline. Although many people think of a synthesizer as “a” music technology, I am trying to explain that it is based on music technology. Here, I briefly support this claim. Defining “technology” The word “technology” originates from the Greek techne (art, craft, skill) and logia (study). The term thus refers to tools, techniques, and systems humans create to solve problems or enhance capabilities. Technological development has been a cornerstone of human development since the beginning. This has been driven by the continuous development of knowledge in addition to the “things”. The invention of the wheel—to use a classic innovation example—wasn’t bound by the specific, physical wheel. The revolutionary aspect was figuring out how that physical, round object would enable faster transport. ...

One of the conclusions in my book Sound Actions is that the future of music technologies lie in musicking technologies. The term “music technology” is typically used to describe tools, instruments, and systems used to create, produce, record, and distribute music. This includes everything from microphones, digital audio workstations (DAWs), and synthesizers to streaming services and analysis tools. I think of “musicking technology” as a wider term than music technology. It builds on Christopher Small’s concept of “musicking” as the act of taking part in music-making of any kind. It also focuses on music as an active process, not a thing. ...

Michael J. Lyons and myself have been working on an edited collection of papers from the NIME conference over the last year, and we presented some reflections on this work at NIME yesterday. Trends at NIME – Reflections on Editing “A NIME Reader” [PDF]** ** This paper provides an overview of the process of editing the forthcoming anthology “A NIME Reader—Fifteen years of New Interfaces for Musical Expression.” The selection process is presented, and we reflect on some of the trends we have observed in re-discovering the collection of more than 1200 NIME papers published throughout the 15 yearlong history of the conference. An anthology is necessarily selective, and ours is no exception. As we present in this paper, the aim has been to represent the wide range of artistic, scientific, and technological approaches that characterize the NIME conference. The anthology also includes critical discourse, and through acknowledgment of the strengths and weaknesses of the NIME community, we propose activities that could further diversify and strengthen the field. ...

](/images/2012/10/image2.jpg) Last week I held a keynote lecture at the Norwegian music technology conference Musikkteknologidagene, by (and at) the Norwegian Academy of Music and NOTAM. The talk was titled: “Embodying the human body in music technology”, and was an attempt at explaining why I believe we need to put more emphasis on human-friendly technologies, and why the field of music cognition is very much connected to that of music technology. I got a comment that it would have been better to exchange “embodying” with “embedding” in my title, and I totally agree. So now I already have a title for my next talk! ...

{.vrtx-introduction} 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. ...

Our new research lab was officially opened yesterday. Director of the Sensing Music-related Actions project Rolf Inge Godøy held a short introduction to the project and to our new research group and lab. He also announced the new name for our interdisciplinary research group: fourMs - Music, Mind, Motion, Machines. The name has a double meaning in that it refers to the four M’s that we are working on, but it also sounds like forms. The best thing about having a short name is that we can also have a short URL: fourms.uio.no. There is not so much information there yet, but I will be adding more in the coming weeks. ...

Michael Zbyszynski has made a detailed tutorial on how to make homemade spherical speakers, using IKEA salad bowls and cheap speaker elements. The speakers look great, and apparently sound ok, so this would be interesting to do in a music tech course.

I am doing some “house-cleaning” on my computer, and came across the link to the OLPC Sound Samples which were announced last month. This collection covers a lot of different sounds, ranging from the Berklee samples to sets created by people in the CSound community. Obviously, not all the 10GB is equally interesting, but the initiative is excellent, and along with the Freesound project, it makes a great resource for various projects.