Music Technology News 2003

The Sound Processing and Control Laboratory is happy to welcome a full-time (post-doctoral) researcher, Dr. Vincent Verfaille.

Dr. Verfaille has recently completed a Ph.D. thesis at the LMA (Laboratoire de Mechanique et Acoustique)/CNRS in Marseille, France, under the direction of Daniel Arfib.

His research interests include adaptive digital audio effects, sound description and transformation, information retrieval, human-computer interaction and psychoacoustics.

Prof. Ichiro Fujinaga was invited by Oxford University to give a talk at the DIAMM Workshop (27-28 October 2003) entitled: Levy Sheet music project and optical music recognition.

The new laboratory, situated in room E538, east wing, Strathcona Music Building, is a high tech small electronics laboratory created to provide research at Music Technology with a facility to develop and test electronic devices for new controller and instrument design.

It consists of a LabView 7.0 Express workstation (Windows XP) with a NI PCI-6036E 200kS/s, 16 channel, 16 bit acquisition card and BNC 2110 adaptor, Circuitmaker 2000 “virtual electronics lab”, one Tektronix TDS1002 2 channel, 60MHz digital storage oscilloscope, one Agilent 34401A 6-1/2 Digit Digital Multimeter, one BK Precision 4040A 20 MHz Sweep/Function Generator, and one BK Precision 1760A Triple Output DC Power Supply. At the moment, both the oscilloscope and the multimeter communicate with LabView, allowing automated measurements.

Furthermore, we have purchased three ATMEL development boards from CCRMA - Stanford University, which allow low-level programming of ATMEL microcontrollers for musical applications. This set of equipment will add to the existing Analog-to-Midi interfaces (Digitizer - iCube, from Infusion Systems and AtoMIC Pro 2.0 from IRCAM), and sets of Infusion System's sensors to allow graduate students to prototype new electronic musical instruments as part of their research.

This laboratory is funded by grants from CFI (Canadian Foundation for Innovation), FQRNT (Fonds Quebecois de Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies) and McGill University, and is coordinated by Professors Wanderley and Scavone.

McGill Audio Preservation Project is part of a larger research plan to develop frameworks and tools for creating distributed digital music libraries. Since phonograph records are quickly disappearing from circulation, it is extremely important that libraries and archives around the world start preserving this significant cultural artifact of the 20th century and make them more accessible. However, there are no standard software or systems to easily digitize the phonograph records and make them widely available. This research project investigates into creating an efficient and economical workflow management system for digitzation of vinyl/non-vinyl phonograph records.

This research is funded by FQRSC and McGill University.

The Music Technology Group at McGill is happy to welcome seven new graduate students. Three Ph.D. students (Catherine Lai, Douglas Van Nort and Ivan Zawada) and four Master's students (Anne-Marie Burns, Paul Kosek, Michael Murray, and Mark Zadel) will start their music tech studies within the Group in the 2003-2004 season. The total number of graduate students in Music Technology (all in research-based degrees) is now seventeen (17).

We are also very happy to welcome four new undergradaute students this year in our highly competitive Honours programme: Vaughn T. Chauvin, Vanessa Li, Tristan Matthews, and Jonas M. Robertson. The total number of students in the Music Technology undergraduate program (honours degrees) is now nineteen (19).

Welcome to Music Technology at McGill!

Together with last year's grants, the total research funds obtained by Music Technology has gone over 1 million canadian dollars (not counting joint grants awarded under CIRMMT). These grants will help Music Technology staff and students to pursue their work in various topics related to audio and music research, allowing for the establishement of cutting-edge research laboratories in the current facilities of the Schulich School of Music.

Here's an update on recent grants received by Music Technology professors and students:

- Prof. Marcelo M. Wanderley was awarded the CFI - Canada Foundation for Innovation, on-going New Opportunities Grant for a CFI total of CDN $199,660 (the CFI contribution, i.e. 40% of the total grant of CDN $499,490) with the project: “Quantitative Assessment of Performer-Instrument Interaction: Applications to Gestural Control of Sound Synthesis and to the Design of New Musical Instruments.” This grant will allow the establishment of a research laboratoty on Human-Computer Interaction in Music, consisting of a high accuracy 3D movement tracker, several video and audio workstations and various controllers, electronics equipment and sensors/devices for the design and evaluation of new interfaces for musical expression.

- Prof. Ichiro Fujinaga was awarded the FQRSC - Fonds de Recherche sur la Societé et la Culture, Etablissement de nouveaux-chercheurs volet individual (2003-6), a total of CDN $64,628, on “Digitization of vinyl phonograph records with automatic generation of text and metadata” and the McGill Research Development Grant (2003), a total of $38,500, on “Distributed Digital Music Library”.

- Prof. Philippe Depalle and Prof. Marcelo M. Wanderley were awarded the FQRNT - Fonds Quebecois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies, Projet de Recherche en Equipe (2003-6), a total of CDN $192,000, for research on “Simulation et Extrapolation Numerique d'Instruments de Musique en Situation de Jeu.”

- Prof. Philippe Depalle was awarded an NSERC - National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant of CDN $75,400 (2003-7) for research on “Sound Synthesis and Sound Processing for Musical and Audio Applications.”

- The students Francois Thibault, Paul Kolesnik, and Cory McKay were awarded FQRNT/FQRSC grants to pursue their master's degrees in Music Technology.

The Music Technology area is happy to welcome a new full-time faculty member in 2003.

Assistant Professor Dr. Gary Scavone, currently the Technical Director of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA - Stanford University), will join the Music Technology Group at McGill in August 2003.

Dr. Scavone holds a PhD on Computer-Based Music Theory & Acoustics and an M.S. on Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, as well as a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a B.A. in Music from Syracuse University.

Dr. Scavone's main research interests concern woodwind acoustic research and modeling, the implementation of the Synthesis ToolKit (STK) in C++, auditory sound perception, and human-computer interface design.

Prof. Dr. Fernando Iazzetta will be visiting the Music Technology Group at McGill in January and February 2003 as part of a sabbatical leave from the Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Prof. Iazzetta's research deals with composition and performance using real-time interactive music systems and the perception of this type of music by listeners acquainted with the traditional composer-performer-audience chain.

During his stay at McGill, he will be collaborating with Profs. Marcelo Wanderley and Sean Ferguson (McGill Electronic Music Studio - EMS) at the Sound Processing and Control Laboratory.

Prof. Iazzetta holds a percussion degree from the Institute of Arts of the Sao Paulo State University and a Doctoral degree in Communication and Semiotics from the Catholic University of Sao Paulo with a thesis entitled “Sons de Silicio: Corpos e Maquinas Fazendo Musica” (Silicon Sounds: Bodies and Machines Making Music). As a researcher he has been exploring new forms of music technology and music interaction. During 1994-95 he visited the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at the University of California, Berkeley, where he developed a research on interactive music systems. He is the author of the book uœsica: Processo e Dinamica (Music: Process and Dynamics, AnnaBlume, 1993) and a other articles about music.