Music

Yesterday, I wrote about the history and future of AI in general. Today, I am continuing my explorations by examining the role of AI in the arts and the impact of the arts on AI. The exploration is based on this notebook, with 60 sources collected by NotebookLM. AI in the Arts AI has a multi-generational history in the arts, transitioning from centuries-old mechanical automatons to symbolic rule-making and eventually to deep learning-based approaches. In the following, I will go through some of the works picked out by NotebookLM. Some of them I know well, others I hadn’t heard about before. A complete list of detected works is at the end of the post. ...

Since I am on a roll with cleaning up my Hugo-based blog, adding alt text, and supporting math writing, I also had to experiment with adding support for musical scores. For the Sensing Sound and Music book, I used music21 in Python after struggling to set up LilyPond. Both LilyPond (professional engraving) and music21 (symbolic analysis and MIDI generation) are powerful and could be integrated into a blog, but they usually require a server-side toolchain or extra installation. However, with the help of CoPilot, I discovered ABCjs, a lightweight client‑side library that provides rendering, playback, and MIDI export, which work well for static sites. ...

It is somewhat embarrassing that I did not “discover” it before, but I only recently realized a striking parallel between the terms dancing and musicking. Music as a verb (“to music”) is only used by a small subset of music researchers, while “to dance” is universally accepted. Why? Musicking Christopher Small introduced the term musicking in the 1990s as a framework for understanding music as a social activity, using music as a verb (“to music”) rather than a noun (“music”). Though still not universal in musicology, the term has gained traction in music education and therapy, where participation in communal music practices is central. ...

Back in 2022, I sat down with my good colleague, Cagri Erdem, to explore two commercially available new interfaces for musical expression: the Seaboard Grand and the ContinuuMini. I have written about my experiences with both of these devices in my book, Sound Actions: Conceptualizing Musical Instruments. In short, they are both super exciting to play with, particularly because unlike many other electronic instruments, they allow for continuous control of pitch and timbre. This is what Cagri and I wanted to explore in a duo setting. ...

I often find that people mix up the terms “music performance” and “musical performance”. Which one is the correct one to use? As far as I can see in various dictionaries, there are no regional differences. Both terms are used widely in both British and American English. It is more of a difference in context. Music performance is more commonly used in contexts specifically focused on the act of performing music, such as concerts, recitals, and instrumental or vocal performances. ...

I often see that people confuse the two terms “length” and “duration”. In most cases, it doesn’t matter, but there are subtle differences one should be aware of. Here is a quick reference: length = a count (number of items, characters, samples, notes) duration = a time span (how long something lasts) In music research, the difference matters! For example, if you ask about the “length of a piece of music”, it could refer to the number of notes in the score (e.g., 189 notes). The duration, however, would be the playback time (e.g., 3 minutes 20 seconds). Obviously, the playback time is related to the tempo, the same length of notes at different tempos yields different durations. ...

ChatGPT cannot play sounds, but since it is trained on vast amounts of text from the internet, it also scraped numerous pieces with information about music chords. Here is a little exploration of that possibility. Obtaining chord information For accompanying musicians, it is common to look for chords for tunes. I began by asking for some well-known tunes: Q: What are the music chords for the song Yesterday? A: The chord progression for the song “Yesterday” by The Beatles is as follows: Verse: G Em C D7 G Em C D7 Em B7 Em B7 C Am D7 G Bridge: Bm Em Bm Em C Am D D7 G Em C D7 G And it repeats throughout the song. ...

Musique de Table is a wonderful piece written by Thierry de Mey. I have seen it performed live several times, and here came across a one-shot video recording that I thought it would be interesting to analyse: The test with some video visualization tools in the Musical Gestures Toolbox for Python. For running the commands below, you first need to import the toolbox in Python: ...

I am happy to announce that my book Sound Actions - Conceptualizing Musical Instruments is now published! I am also thrilled that this is an open access book, meaning that is free to download and read. You are, of course, also welcome to pick up a paper copy! Here is a quick video summary of the book’s content: In the book, I combine perspectives from embodied music cognition and interactive music technology. The approach is what I call “embodied music technology”. ...

After two years in the making, I am happy to finally introduce our new online course: Motion Capture: The art of studying human activity. The course will run on the FutureLearn platform and is for everyone interested in the art of studying human movement. It has been developed by a team of RITMO researchers in close collaboration with the pedagogical team and production staff at LINK – Centre for Learning, Innovation & Academic Development. ...