Download Single-Note Ornamentation Transcription for the Irish Tin Whistle Based on Onset Detection Ornamentation plays a very important role in Irish Traditional music, giving more expression to the music by altering or embellishing small pieces of a melody. Single-note ornamentation, such as cuts and strikes, are the most common type in Irish Traditional music and are played by articulating the note pitch during the onset stage. A technique for transcribing single note ornamentation for the tin whistle based on onset detection is presented. This method focuses on the characteristics of the tin whistle within Irish traditional music, customising a time-frequency based representation for detecting the instant when new notes played using single-note ornamentation start and release.
Download Computer Instrument Development and the Composition Process This text looks at the computer instrument development work and its influence on the composition process. As a preamble to the main discussion, the different types of software for sound generation and transformation are reviewed. The concept of meta-themes is introduced and explored in the context of contemporary music. Two examples of the author’s computer music work are used to discuss the complex relationship between software development and composition. The first piece provides an example of such relationships in the context of ‘tape’ music. The second explores the use of computer instruments in live electroacoustic music. The activities of composition and instrument creation will be shown to be at times indistinguishable and mutually dependent.
Download A Maximum Likelihood Approach to Blind Audio De-Reverberation Blind audio de-reverberation is the problem of removing reverb from an audio signal without having explicit data regarding the system and/or the input signal. Blind audio de-reverberation is a more difficult signal-processing task than ordinary dereverberation based on deconvolution. In this paper different blind de-reverberation algorithms derived from kurtosis maximization and a maximum likelihood approach are analyzed and implemented.
Download Event-Synchronous Music Synthesis This work presents a novel framework for music synthesis, based on the perceptual structure analysis of pre-existing musical signals, for example taken from a personal MP3 database. We raise the important issue of grounding music analysis on perception, and propose a bottom-up approach to music analysis, as well as modeling, and synthesis. A model of segmentation for polyphonic signals is described, and is qualitatively validated through several artifact-free music resynthesis experiments, e.g., reversing the ordering of sound events (notes), without reversing their waveforms. Then, a compact “timbre” structure analysis, and a method for song description in the form of an “audio DNA” sequence is presented. Finally, we propose novel applications, such as music cross-synthesis, or time-domain audio compression, enabled through simple sound similarity measures, and clustering.
Download Parametric Coding of Spatial Audio Recently, there has been a renewed interest in techniques for coding of stereo and multi-channel audio signals. Stereo and multichannel audio signals evoke an auditory spatial image in a listener. Thus, in addition to pure redundancy reduction, a receiver model which considers properties of spatial hearing may be used for reducing the bitrate. This has been done in previous techniques by considering the importance of interaural level difference cues at high frequencies and by considering the binaural masking level difference when computing the masked threshold for multiple audio channels. Recently, a number of more systematic and parameterized such techniques were introduced. In this paper an overview over a technique, denoted binaural cue coding (BCC), is given. BCC represents stereo or multichannel audio signals as a single or more downmixed audio channels plus side information. The side information contains the interchannel cues inherent in the original audio signal that are relevant for the perception of the properties of the auditory spatial image. The relation between the inter-channel cues and attributes of the auditory spatial image is discussed. Other applications of BCC are discussed, such as joint-coding of independent audio signals providing flexibility at the decoder to mix arbitrary stereo, multichannel, and binaural signals.
Download Wave Field Synthesis - A Promising Spatial Rendering Concept Modern convolution technologies offer possibilities to overcome principle shortcomings of loudspeaker stereophony by exploiting the Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) concept for rendering virtual spatial characteristics of sound events. Based on the Huygens principle loudspeaker arrays are reproducing a synthetic sound field around the listener, whereby the dry audio signal is combined with measured or modelled information about the room and the source’s position to enable the accurate reproduction of the source within its acoustical environment. Not surprisingly, basic and practical constraints of WFS systems limit the rendering accurateness and the perceived spatial audio quality to a certain degree, dependent on characteristic features and technical parameters of the sound field synthesis. However, recent developments have shown already that a number of applications could be possible in the near future. An attractive example is the synthesis of WFS and stereophony offering enhanced freedom in sound design as well as improved quality and more flexibility in practical playback situations for multichannel sound mixes.