Web Audio Conference

Series

Web Audio Conference

Permanent Link

https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70986

Series Type

Event Series

Associated Organization(s)

Organizational Unit

School of Music

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 70

reNotate: The Crowdsourcing and Gamification of Symbolic Music Encoding

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-04) Taylor, Benjamin ; Shanahan, Daniel ; Wolf, Matthew ; Allison, Jesse ; Baker, David John

Musicologists and music theorists have, for quite some time, hoped to be able to make use of computational methods to examine large corpora of music. As far back as the 1940s, an IBM card-sorter was used to implement patternfinding in traditional British folk songs (Bronson 1949, 1959). Alan Lomax famously implemented statistical methods in his Cantometrics project (Lomax, 1968), which sought to collate a large corpus of folk music from across many cultures. In the 1980s and 90s, a number of encoding projects were instituted in an attempt to be able to make searchable music notation on a large scale. The Essen Folksong Collection (Schaffrath, 1995) collected ethnographic transcriptions, whereas projects at the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities (CCARH) focused on scores in the Western Art Music tradition (Bach chorales, Mozart sonatas, instrumental themes, etc.). Recently, scholars have focused on improving Optical Music Recognition, in the hopes of facilitating the acquisition of large numbers of musical scores (Fujinaga, et al., 2014), but non-notated music, such as improvisational jazz, is often overlooked. While there have been many advances in music information retrieval in recent years, parameters that would facilitate in-depth musicological analysis are still out of reach (for example, stream segregation to examine specific melodic lines, or the analysis of harmony at a resolution that would allow for an analysis of specific chord voicings). Our project seeks to implement methods similar to those used in CAPTCHA and RECAPTCHA technology to crowdsource the symbolic encoding of musical information through a web-based gaming interface. The introductory levels ask participants to tap along with an audio recording's tempo, giving us an approximate BPM, while the second level asks for participants to tap with onsets. The third level asks them to match a contour of a three-note segment, and the final stage asks for specific note matching within that contour. A social-gaming interface allows for users to compete against one another. It is our hope that this work can be generalized to many types of musical genres, and that a web-based framework might facilitate the encoding of musicological and music-theoretic datasets that might be underrepresented by current MIR work.
Live Looping Electronic Music Performance with MIDI Hardware

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-04) McKegg, Matt

I have spent much of the last three years building a Web Audio based desktop application for live electronic music performance called Loop Drop. It was inspired by my own frustration with existing tools for live performance. I wanted a tool that would give me, as a performer, the level of control and expression desired but still feel like playing a musical instrument instead of programming a computer. My application was built using web technologies such as JavaScript and HTML5, leveraging existing experience as a web developer and providing an excellent workflow for quick prototyping and user interface design. In combination with Electron, a single developer can build a desktop audio application very efficiently. Loop Drop uses Web MIDI to interface with hardware such as Novation Launchpad. The software allows creation of sounds using synthesis and sampling, and arranges these into “chunks” which may be placed in any configuration across the midi controller’s button grid. These sounds may be triggered directly, or played quantised to the current tempo at a given rate using “beat repeat”. Everything the performer plays is collected in a buffer that at any time may be turned into a loop. This allows the performer to avoid recording anxiety — a common problem with most live looping systems. They can jam out ideas, then once happy with the sequence, press the loop button to lock it in. In my performance, I will use Loop Drop in conjunction with multiple Novation Launchpad midi controllers, to improvise 15 minutes of electronic music using sounds that I have organised ahead of time. The user interface will be visible to the audience as a projection. I will also be demonstrating the power of hosting Web Audio in Electron by interfacing with an external LED array connected over Serial Peripheral Interface Bus (SPI) to be used as an audio visualiser light show.
An interactive, graphical coding environment for EarSketch online using Blockly and Web Audio API

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-04) Mahadevan, Anand ; Freeman, Jason ; Magerko, Brian

This paper presents an interactive graphical programming environment for EarSketch, using Blockly and Web Audio API. This visual programming element sidesteps syntac- tical challenges common to learning text-based languages, thereby targeting a wider range of users in both informal and academic settings. The implementation allows seamless integration with the existing EarSketch web environment, saving block-based code to the cloud as well as exporting it to Python and JavaScript.
BPMTimeline: JavaScript Tempo Functions and Time Mappings using an Analytical Solution

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-04) Dias, Bruno ; Pinto, H. Sofia ; Matos, David M.

Time mapping is a common feature in many (commercial and/or open-source) Digital Audio Workstations, allowing the musician to automate tempo changes of a musical performance or work, as well as to visualize the relation between score time (beats) and real/performance time (seconds). Unfortunately, available music production, performance and remixing tools implemented with web technologies like JavaScript and Web Audio API do not offer any mechanism for exible, and seamless, tempo manipulation and automation. In this paper, we present BPMTimeline, a time mapping library, providing a seamless mapping between score and performance time. To achieve this, we model tempo changes as tempo functions (a well documented subject in literature) and realize the mappings through integral and inverse of integral of tempo functions.
rMIXr: how we learned to stop worrying and love the graph

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-04) Fields, Ben ; Phippen, Sam

In this talk we present a case study in the use of the web audio APIs. Specifically, our use of them for the creation of a rapidly developed prototype application. The app, called rMIXr (http://rmixr.com), is a simple digital audio workstation (DAW) for fan remix contests. We created rMIXr in 48 hours at the Midem Hack Day in June 2015. We’ll give a brief demo of the app and show multi-channel sync. We'll also show various effects as well as cutting/time-slicing.
Virtual Sound Gallery

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-04) Bundin, Andrey

Virtual Sound Gallery (VSG) is a web stage for modern multichannel music, sound, and audiovisual art. It is an accessible, web-based virtual reality (VR) environment for a visualized binaural simulation of multichannel sound reproduction. In this environment, a user can change their location among virtual loudspeakers and rotate their head to get the best spatial listening experience. In addition, an integrated video engine provides the ability to play visual content on one or several virtual screens in sync with the audio. VSG provides access to different electroacoustic music compositions presented in several virtual exhibitions and classified by concepts, styles, and organizations.
The Semantic Music Player: A Smart Mobile Player Based on Ontological Structures and Analytical Feature Metadata

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-04) Thalmann, Florian ; Perez-Carrillo, Alfonso ; Fazekas, György ; Wiggins, Geraint A. ; Sandler, Mark

The Semantic Music Player is a cross-platform web and mobile app built with Ionic and the Web Audio API that explores new ways of playing back music on mobile devices, particularly indeterministic, context-dependent, and interactive ways. It is based on Dynamic Music Objects, a format that represents musical content and structure in an abstract way and makes it modifiable within definable constraints. For each Dynamic Music Object, the Semantic Music Player generates a custom graphical interface and enables appropriate user interface controls and mobile sensors based on its requirements. When the object is played back, the player takes spontaneous decisions based on the given structural information and the analytical data and reacts to sensor and user interface inputs. In this paper, we introduce the player and its underlying concepts and give some examples of the potentially infinite amount of use cases and musical results.
Tune.js: A Microtonal Web Audio Library

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-04) Taylor, Benjamin ; Bernstein, Andrew

The authors share Tune.js, a JavaScript library of over 3,000 microtonal tunings and historical temperaments for use with web audio. The current state of tuning in web audio is reviewed, followed by an explication of the library's creation and an overview of its potential applications. Finally, the authors share several small projects made with Tune.js and ponder future development opportunities.
A Novel Approach to Streaming and Client Side Rendering of Multichannel Audio with Synchronised Metadata

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-04) Paradis, Matthew ; Pike, Chris ; Day, Richard ; Melchior, Frank

Object based audio broadcasting is an approach which combines audio with metadata that describes how the audio should be rendered. This metadata can include spatial positioning mixing parameters and descriptors to define the type of audio represented by the object. In this talk we show an approach to enabling the streaming of multichannel audio and synchronised metadata to the browser. Audio is rendered in the browser to multiple formats based on the information contained in the synchronised metadata channel. This allows adaptive mixing and rendering of content and user interaction. Based on the MPEG/DASH standard this approach allows an arbitrary number of audio channels to be presented as discrete inputs to the Web Audio API (dependent on any channel limit imposed by the browser). Binaural, 5.1 and stereo renders can be generated and selected for output by the user in real time without any change to the source media stream. Channels marked as being interactive can have their properties exposed to the user to adjust based on their preferences. The audio and metadata is originated from a single BWF file compliant with ITU-R BS 2076 (Audio Definition Model) with the audio being encoded using AAC (as per the MPEG/DASH standard) and the metadata represented in JSON format to the browser. This approach provides a flexible framework for the prototyping and presentation of new audio experiences to online audiences and provides a platform for delivery object based audio to online users.
Soundworks Tutorial

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-04) Schnell, Norbert ; Lambert, Jean-Philippe ; Goldszmidt, Samuel ; Matuszewski, Benjamin

The Soundworks framework is dedicated to the development of applications featuring co-located collaborative/collective mobile interactions. The framework is entirely based on web APIs and Node.js. It provides a set of services, abstractions, and user interfaces that help the developer to concentrate on the essential – the design of interaction and audiovisual rendering. In the tutorial, we will present the features and architecture of the framework as well as some examples before guiding the attendees through the implementation of a simple application. The workshop will conclude with a brief collective performance.