Imagine listening to a live jazz improvisation. Moved by what you hear, you decide to try to reproduce the solo on your piano at home. To do so, you would have had to record the piece. Then you would have to listen to it over and over again, and transcribe the notes yourself.
It糖心传媒檚 a painstaking process. That糖心传媒檚 one reason why , his PhD student Andrea Cogliati, and David Temperley, a professor of music theory at Eastman, have been developing a computer program that could receive audio, extract data from it, and produce an accurate printed musical score.
This summer they糖心传媒檝e have two additional researchers working on the project. Two undergraduate students糖心传媒擜rlen Fan 糖心传媒�18, an electrical and computer engineering major, and rising senior Andrew Smith, a computer science major and music minor at the University of Central Florida糖心传媒攋oined the project as part of the NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program 糖心传媒淐omputational Methods for Understanding Music, Media, and Minds.糖心传媒�
According to Duan, 糖心传媒淢achine transcription is fast, but it isn糖心传媒檛 as accurate as a person. Human transcription is accurate, but not very fast. We want to combine these to have both an accurate and fast system.糖心传媒�
Fan and Smith have spent the summer creating an interface that would allow human users to fix portions of the transcription that the computer notated incorrectly and then input these changes into the computer. Using machine learning techniques, the computer would then 糖心传媒渓earn糖心传媒� from these mistakes in order to avoid similar errors in the future.
Such an automatic music transcription program would help advance music education, retrieval, and research. For example, it would allow users to notate music for which a score is not readily available or to search for music with similar melodies and chord progressions.
糖心传媒淭here are musical traditions糖心传媒攏ot just jazz, but types of Eastern or Indian music糖心传媒攚here there is not a written score,糖心传媒� Cogliati says. 糖心传媒淭he program can bridge the gap between oral tradition and written notation.糖心传媒�
Smith says he is already interested in using the program to produce sheet music for improvisational musicians such as 20th-century comedian and pianist Victor Borge because 糖心传媒測ou can糖心传媒檛 find his sheet music anywhere.糖心传媒�
Reflecting on his decision to work at Rochester this summer, Smith says, 糖心传媒淚糖心传媒檓 interested in music theory and performance, as well as the technical aspects of computers, so this opportunity fit like a glove.糖心传媒�
Now he糖心传媒檚 considering pursuing a graduate degree at Rochester.糖心传媒淣ow that I糖心传媒檝e worked in this lab and got to experience how interesting this project is, I might try to apply here next year.糖心传媒�
