Showing posts with label music. Show all posts

2013-04-12

Brain scans predict how much you'll pay for music - Technology & Science - CBC News

Signals from a specific region of the brain can help scientists predict what music people are tempted to buy and how much money they're willing to spend on it, a new study suggests.

Research slated for publication Friday in the journal Science identified the particular area that becomes active when people hear a song for the very first time. Measuring activity in that area — known as the nucleus accumbens — allows scientists to accurately assess the degree to which people are enjoying the sounds they're hearin

Source: Brain scans predict how much you'll pay for music - Technology & Science - CBC News

Why Your Brain Loves That New Song - ScienceNOW

Neural harmony. Several brain regions work together to produce good vibrations when listening to favorite music.

Credit: Peter Finnie and Ben Beheshti

When jazz legend John Coltrane first heard Charlie Parker play the saxophone, the music hit him "right between the eyes," he once said. According to neuroscientists, Coltrane was exactly right. When we hear music that we like, even for the first time, a part of the brain's reward system is activated, a new study has shown. The region, called the nucleus accumbens, determines how much we value the song—even predicting how much a person is willing to pay for the new track.

Source: Why Your Brain Loves That New Song - ScienceNOW

Brain's music pleasure zone

Researchers scanned the brains of subjects while they listened to new songs and asked how much they would spend on buying the tracks. They found that the most popular songs - those which people were prepared to pay more for - were also the ones that elicited the strongest response in the nucleus accumbens, a structure in the centre of the brain that is involved in reward processing.

[...]

"This part of the brain is the part that has stored all the templates of the music we've heard in the past and will be unique for each individuals," she said. "The way that we like music is 100% unique to who we are and what we've heard in the past and the way that our superior temporal gyrus has been shaped. The brain is working a bit like a music-recommendation system."

The latest results shed further light into Salimpoor's 2011 study, which found that the experience of pleasure when listening to music was mediated by the release of the brain's reward chemical, dopamine. She said that music seemed to tap into the circuitry in the brain that had evolved to drive human motivation. This ancient reward system, when listening to music, was being used to provide a cognitive reward.

Source: Brain's music pleasure zone

Favourite music evokes same feelings as good food or drugs | Science | The Guardian

The experience of pleasure is mediated in all these situations by the release of the brain's reward chemical, dopamine, according to results of experiments carried out by a team led by Valorie Salimpoor of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, which are published today in Nature Neuroscience.

Source: Favourite music evokes same feelings as good food or drugs | Science | The Guardian

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2012-10-03

Telenoid, a "minimalistic human" Jazz-singing robot

Telenoid R1 bot meant to be 'minimalistic human' | Crave - CNET

Telenoid is a child-sized telepresence robot through which users can interact with others from a distance. Created in collaboration with Osaka University and Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), Telenoid is a tool for investigating "the essential elements for representing and transferring humanlike presence," according to Ishiguro and his team.

Source: Telenoid R1 bot meant to be 'minimalistic human' | Crave - CNET

Telenoid

Features of Telenoid R1 include:

A novel minimalistic design that can effectively represent human presence

Soft and pleasant body

Low cost due to decreased numbers of actuators
(Telenoid R1:9、Geminoid™ HI-1:50、Geminoid™ F:12)

Small-size body and simple internal structure by use of electric (DC) motors

Easy teleoperation based on the teleoperation technology developed by ATR

Source: Telenoid

Talk with Telenoid, Ars Electronica - YouTube

Source: Talk with Telenoid, Ars Electronica - YouTube

Consciousness and All That Jazz

Could a robot that sings jazz be the key to understanding and harnessing robot intelligence?
That is the hopes of researcher Antonio Chella at the University of Palermo, Italy.

Source: Consciousness and All That Jazz

Jazz-singing robot could shed light on consciousness - tech - 27 September 2012 - New Scientist

Antonio Chella at the University of Palermo, Italy, is working with a Telenoid robot, developed by the Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory in Japan (pictured). To start with, the Telenoid will be trained to mimic the movements and simple sounds made by a human singer, as well as associate parts of music with different emotional states. Chella then plans to see if the robot can use these associations to improvise - choosing movements and vocalisations that complement its human duet partner.

Intelligence is often defined as the ability to find connections between existing entities - understanding that a key goes in a lock, for instance. But Chella suggests that a conscious organism should be able to go a step further and introduce novel connections - between, say, musical phrases - that result in the creation of something new. That, in essence, is the idea behind improvisation.

Jazz musicians interviewed by Chella talked of having a mental library of musical phrases that they were able to combine in new ways when prompted by other musicians. Importantly, however, this combination happens in a state that is "similar in a sense to dreaming", he says. "Not really conscious, but not unconscious." Chella wants to replicate these states in a machine. "Consciousness could be linked to these moments of combination," he says.

Source: Jazz-singing robot could shed light on consciousness - tech - 27 September 2012 - New Scientist

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2012-06-30

Shimi a Dancing Musical Robot and Smartphone Dock

Smartphone Powered Robot DJ "Shimi" Premieres at Google's I/O Conference - International Science Times

Researchers at Georgia Tech's Center for Music Technology have injected a little fun into robotics with their newest creation. Their one-foot-tall 'Shimi' robot is a smart-phone enabled DJ that gets into the music with you.

True to its name, Shimi dances to the beat. Docking your iPhone or Android into the robot allows it access to your music library, where it can pick the music to pump up your party. Shimi can read body language, so all you have to do to let it know you don't like a song is shake your head in front of it.

Source: Smartphone Powered Robot DJ "Shimi" Premieres at Google's I/O Conference - International Science Times

Georgia Tech Researchers Create Musical Robot Companion

Shimi creator Professor Gil Weinberg, director of Georgia Tech's Center for Music Technology, has founded a start-up company, named Tovbot. Plans are for the robot to be available to consumers by the 2013 holiday season.

Source: Georgia Tech Researchers Create Musical Robot Companion

Do the robot: Android wedding DJ picks songs, dances to the beat and reacts to the crowd to keep the mood | Mail Online

If a user taps of claps a beat,v Shimi analyzes it, scans the phone's musical library and immediately plays the song that best matches the suggestion. Once the music starts, Shimi dances to the rhythm.

The robot's 'eyes' can also follow people round a room and ensure that speakers are aimed at them.

Shimi, a musical companion developed by Georgia Tech's Center for Music Technology, recommends songs, dances to the beat and keeps the music pumping based on listener feedback.

[...]

Shimi is essentially a docking station with a ‘brain’ powered by an Android phone. Once docked, the robot gains the sensing and musical generation capabilities of the user's mobile device. In other words, if there's an ‘app for that,’ Shimi is ready.

For instance, by using the phone's camera and face-detecting software, the bot can follow a listener around the room and position its ‘ears,’ or speakers, for optimal sound.

Source: Do the robot: Android wedding DJ picks songs, dances to the beat and reacts to the crowd to keep the mood | Mail Online

Shimi: The incredible dancing DJ robot - The Week

[...] It's about time engineers built a robot "with the intention to party," says Lee Rannals at RedOrbit. "A dancing robot that follows you around is pretty cool," says Elise Moreau at Slashgear, "but it looks like Shimi still has a bit of growing up to do." Call me when they've built apps that let you shake your head or wave your hand to get the bot to skip lousy songs. Well, "I'm not a huge fan of desktop toys that flap around," says Technabob. But there's something endearing about watching a little robotic DJ "get its groove on to your music." See for yourself:

Source: Shimi: The incredible dancing DJ robot - The Week

Related

2011-03-28

Universal Property of Music Discovered

Cognitive universal for scales : Compute Scotland

Researchers at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the University of Amsterdam have discovered a universal property of scales: if their tones are compared in a two- or three-dimensional way by means of a coordinate system, they form convex or star-convex structures.

By placing scales in a coordinate system (‘Euler lattice’) they can be studied as multi-dimensional objects.

Dr Aline Honingh (left) and Prof. Rens Bod (right) from the ILLC did this for nearly 1,000 scales from all over the world, from Japan to Indonesia and from China to Greece.

Collected from: Cognitive universal for scales : Compute Scotland

Universal property of music discovered

The many hundreds of scales in existence seem to possess a deeper commonality: if their tones are compared in a two- or three-dimensional way by means of a coordinate system, they form convex or star-convex structures. (Credit: Image courtesy of Universiteit van Amsterdam (UVA))

Collected from: Universal property of music discovered

1000 scales
By placing scales in a coordinate system (an ‘Euler lattice’) they can be studied as multidimensional objects. Dr. Aline Honingh and Prof. Rens Bod from the ILLC did this for nearly 1,000 scales from all over the world, from Japan to Indonesia and from China to Greece. To their surprise, they discovered that all traditional scales produced star-convex patterns. This was also the case with almost 97% of non-traditional, scales conceived by contemporary composers, even though contemporary composers often state they have designed unconventional scales. This percentage is very high, because the probability that a random series of notes will produce a star-convex pattern is very small. Honingh and Bod try to explain this phenomenon by using the notion of consonance (harmony of sounds). They connect their research results with language and visual perception where convex patterns have also been detected, possibly indicating a cognitive universal (a general cognitive property).

Collected from: UvA researchers discover universal property of music - News and Agenda - University of Amsterdam

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2010-04-26

New Software Processor Can Detect and Transcribe Musical Notes

New Software Processor Can Transcribe Music From Any Performance

Music to Your Eyes A new computer system can convert sound files into sheet music by creating a harmonic dictionary. It could conceivably convert this Global Symphony Orchestra production of "Star Wars" back into written notes.

collected from this page with Yooper.

Method developed to identify musical notes at any venue

The researchers start with a 'wav' file, a common format for audio recordings, and after applying the method they obtain a 'midi' file, a musical instrument communication protocol that makes it possible to visualise the sheet music and listen to the result.
A team of telecommunications engineers from the University of Jaen (UJA) has created a new method to automatically detect and identify the musical notes in an audio file and generate sheet music. The system identifies the notes even when the type of instrument, musician, type of music or recording studio conditions vary.

collected from this page with Yooper.

Music Scene-Adaptive Harmonic Dictionary for Unsupervised Note-Event Detection

Carabias-Orti, J.J.; Vera-Candeas, P.; Caadas-Quesada, F.J.; Ruiz-Reyes, N.;
Telecommun. Eng. Dept., Univ. of Jaen, Jaen, Spain

Abstract

Harmonic decompositions are a powerful tool dealing with polyphonic music signals in some potential applications such as music visualization, music transcription and instrument recognition. The usefulness of a harmonic decomposition relies on the design of a proper harmonic dictionary. Music scene-adaptive harmonic atoms have been used with this purpose. These atoms are adapted to the musical instruments and to the music scene, including aspects related with the venue, musician, and other relevant acoustic properties. In this paper, an unsupervised process to obtain music scene-adaptive spectral patterns for each MIDI-note is proposed. Furthermore, the obtained harmonic dictionary is applied to note-event detection with matching pursuits. In the case of a music database that only consists of one-instrument signals, promising results (high accuracy and low error rate) have been achieved for note-event detection.

collected from this page with Yooper.

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2010-02-01

Pat Metheny's Orchestrion Tour with Robot Band

clipped from en.wikipedia.org

Orchestrion

An orchestrion is a generic name for a machine that plays music and is designed to sound like an orchestra or band. Orchestrions may be operated by means of a large pinned cylinder or by a music roll and less commonly book music. The sound is usually produced by pipes, though they will be voiced differently to those found in a pipe organ, as well as percussion instruments. Some orchestrions also contain a piano.

clipped from www.wired.com

Robot Band Backs Pat Metheny on Orchestrion Tour

BROOKLYN, New York — Dozens of robotic band members will join jazz guitarist Pat Metheny on his next international tour. It’s the same backup band that accompanied him on his latest album, Orchestrion, producing sounds both familiar and alien.

clipped from www.youtube.com

Pat Metheny - Orchestrion Preview

clipped from www.youtube.com

Pat Metheny - The Orchestrion EPK

Pat describes his latest musical project Orchestrion.

clipped from www.patmetheny.com

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2009-12-23

Shimon -- The Improvising Robotic Marimba Player

clipped from www.npr.org

Robot Music: Play It Again, Shimon

clipped from gtcmt.coa.gatech.edu

Shimon - The Perceptual and Improvisational Robotic Marimba Player

Shimon, the second robotic member of Georgia Tech’s Robotic Musicianship Group, is designed to play the marimba. It utilizes melodic and harmonic perception and improvisation algorithms, adding to the rhythmic improvisation approach taken by Haile, Georgia Tech’s first robotic drummer. Shimon is designed create rich acoustic sound and to provide communicative social cues to its human counterparts. The robot’s head provides fellow musicians visual cues that represent social-musical elements, from beat detection and tonality, to attention and spatial interaction.

clipped from www.youtube.com

Robotic Musicianship jam session - Eastern

clipped from www.youtube.com

Human-Robot Jazz Improvisation (Highlights)

clipped from www.youtube.com

ZOOZbeat and Improvising Robot 'Shimon' Jammin'

clipped from www.youtube.com

Jammin' Robotic Marimba Playing Shimon ZOOZin' It Up with Atlanta Hip-Hop Artist Street Lotto

clipped from web.media.mit.edu

guy hoffman, ph.d
center for music technology
georgia institute of technology

Human-Robot Joint Musical Performance
How can humans and robots perform live music together, in a fluent and synchronized way, even if the music is structured and precise? In this work I extend my anticipatory approach to time-critical human-robot musical performance. Shimon, a robotic marimba player listens to a human pianist, and plays it part in a a jazz duo.

Sources:

Brain Music Therapy

Clipped from: Feds Turn to ‘Brain Music’ to Boost Emergency Worker Performance | Danger Room

Feds Turn to ‘Brain Music’ to Boost Emergency Worker Performance

The program is supposed to study how “brain music” — a customized soundtrack designed to either boost alertness or reduce stress — can improve the performance of police, firefighters and other first responders. As described by DHS, researchers will test how an “instrumental alert track” [...] can boost focus and energy, or act to reduce stress. A group of firefighters will take part in the experiment.

Clipped from: Employment Opportunities

Brain Music Therapy (BMT)

BMT is an effective, scientifically proven treatment for stress, insomnia, anxiety, and depression. It has also been found to increase productivity and concentration, and help reduce headaches. BMT records an individual's brain waves and converts them into unique musical sounds. These musical sounds correlate to brain waves that promote relaxation and trigger activation in your body. The musical sounds are presented to you in the form of two musical files - one relaxing, and one activating. Playing those files promotes relaxation and activation in your body. BMT does not involve taking pills, and has had no side effects to date. It is customized to an individual's unique brain waves and backed by solid scientific evidence, including double blind studies.

Brain Music Therapy finds, records, and reinforces brain waves that are associated with various physiological parameters, such as heart rate and muscle tension.

Changes in brain activity correlate with physiological parameters and reflect on emotions and behavior. The rhythmic patterns of brain waves promote distinct meditative and activating states. Unfortunately, a person's desire to fall asleep does not always correspond to his/her brain wave state.

Brain Music Therapy records brain waves using EEG (electroencephalogram) equipment, and translates them into unique musical compositions. These musical sounds are presented in the form of two music files: relaxing and activating. Listening those files reflects on individual brain wave patterns and promotes the desired state of mind.

Clipped from: HUMAN BIONICS

HUMAN BIONICS has been awarded a Phase III SBIR contract by The Department of Homeland Security to study a proprietary Wellness Program that provides Nutrition Education and Music-Based Neurotraining to reduce stress and improve sleep and cognitive on-the-job performance. Please Read: Cerebral Melodies.

Clipped from: DHS | Science and Technology (S&T) Snapshots

Cerebral Melodies

Improving emergency response through music

Human brains are powerful instruments. The Department of Homeland Security wants to help emergency responders manage their demanding jobs better using the music created by them.

The concept of Brain Music is to use the frequency, amplitude, and duration of musical sounds to move the brain from an anxious state to a more relaxed state. In British philosopher John Locke’s terms, Brain Music brings new meaning to his famous phrase: “A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World.”

Sources:

2009-02-26

A Hard Days Math

Clipped from: YouTube - A Hard Day's Night

A Hard Day's Night

Clipped from: Beatles "A Hard Day's Night" Chord Mystery Solved Using Fourier Transform

"It’s been a hard day’s night
And I’ve been working like a dog"

The opening chord to "A Hard Day’s Night" is also famous because, for 40 years, no one quite knew exactly what chord Harrison was playing.

Clipped from: The "A Hard Day's Night" Chord - Rock's Holy Grail@Everything2.com

"The Songwriting Secrets of The Beatles") summarises 21 different interpretations of the famous chord - just a mere selection of the interpretations he found in his research. Here are a few candidates suggested over the years:

A dominant 9th of F in the key of C
G-C-F-Bb-D-G
C-Bb-D-F-G-C in the key of C
A polytriad ii7/V in Ab major
G7sus4 (open position)
D7sus4 (open position)
G7 with added 9th and suspended 4th
A superimposition of Dm, F, and G
Gsus4/D
G11sus4
G7sus7/A
Dm11 with no 9th
Gm7add11
G9sus4/D

Clipped from: Beatles Unknown "A Hard Day's Night" Chord Mystery Solved Using Fourier Transform

Beatles Unknown "A Hard Day's Night" Chord Mystery Solved Using Fourier Transform

There were theories aplenty and musicians, scholars and amateur guitar players all gave it a try, but it took a Dalhousie mathematician to figure out the exact formula.

Four years ago, inspired by reading news coverage about the song’s 40th anniversary, Jason Brown of Dalhousie’s Department of Mathematics decided to try and see if he could apply a mathematical calculation known as Fourier transform to solve the Beatles’ riddle. The process allowed him to decompose the sound into its original frequencies using computer software and parse out which notes were on the record.

Clipped from: A Hard Day's Night (song) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

According to Brown, the Rickenbacker guitar wasn't the only instrument used. "It wasn't just George Harrison playing it and it wasn't just the Beatles playing on it... There was a piano in the mix." Specifically, he claims that Harrison was playing the following notes on his 12 string guitar: a2, a3, d3, d4, g3, g4, c4, and another c4; McCartney played a d3 on his bass; producer George Martin was playing d3, f3, d5, g5, and e6 on the piano, while Lennon played a loud c5 on his six-string guitar.[25]

Clipped from: Professor Uses Mathematics to Decode Beatles Tunes - WSJ.com

Math Professor Figures Formula for Beatles Success

Jason Brown listens to the Beatles with a uniquely analytical ear. The mathematics professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, says he's figured out the math behind the best of the Fab Four. Now, using "mathematical tricks" he's picked up from the band, he's written a very Beatles-esque song of his own. WSJ's Christina Jeng reports.

2008-11-22

Robots Play Music With Real People

clipped from blog.wired.com

Robots Pass Musical Turing Test

The Robotic Musicianship Group at Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology just blew our minds with some videos depicting robots playing music with real people.

These robots, developed with funding from the National Science Foundation, listen to humans creating music in real time and play along with them. One might say they improvise.

clipped from gtcmt.com

Robotic Musicianship Group

The Robotic Musicianship Group aims to facilitate meaningful musical interactions between humans and machines, leading to novel musical experiences and outcomes. In our research we combine computational modeling approaches for perception, interaction, and improvisation, with novel approaches for generating acoustic responses in physical and visual manners.

clipped from www.music.gatech.edu

clipped from www.youtube.com

Robotic Musicianship jam session - Eastern

A session between two humans and two robots: Haile, the perceptual robotic drummer detects the beat played by a human darbuka player and improvises based the human's input.

clipped from www.youtube.com

Pages

2013-04-12

2012-10-03

2012-06-30

2011-03-28

Researchers at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the University of Amsterdam have discovered a universal property of scales: if their tones are compared in a two- or three-dimensional way by means of a coordinate system, they form convex or star-convex structures.

1000 scales

2010-04-26

Method developed to identify musical notes at any venue

2010-02-01

Orchestrion

Robot Band Backs Pat Metheny on Orchestrion Tour

Pat Metheny - Orchestrion Preview

Pat Metheny - The Orchestrion EPK

2009-12-23

Robot Music: Play It Again, Shimon

Shimon - The Perceptual and Improvisational Robotic Marimba Player

Robotic Musicianship jam session - Eastern

Human-Robot Jazz Improvisation (Highlights)

ZOOZbeat and Improvising Robot 'Shimon' Jammin'

Jammin' Robotic Marimba Playing Shimon ZOOZin' It Up with Atlanta Hip-Hop Artist Street Lotto

guy hoffman, ph.d

Human-Robot Joint Musical Performance

2009-04-29

Feds Turn to ‘Brain Music’ to Boost Emergency Worker Performance

Cerebral Melodies

2009-02-26

A Hard Day's Night

2008-11-22

Robots Pass Musical Turing Test

Robotic Musicianship Group

Robotic Musicianship jam session - Eastern