Musicology for the Masses

This project sets up scenarios to examine how people's relationship with music is changed by using new technologies, enabling us to understand how to bridge the gap from our proven digital music research to the mainstream market.

Underpinning this project are the new technologies associated with metadata -- in particular, Semantic Metadata. These have the potential to change the landscape for music (and indeed other media types) in all areas from creation to consumption. By changing how users interact with music, this project will shed light on new business models for the music industry.

Publications:

• MIR in School? Lessons from Ethnographic Observation of Secondary School Music Classes, Dan Stowell and Simon Dixon, ISMIR 2011.
• Ethnographic observations of musicologists at the British Library: implications for Music Information Retrieval, Mathieu Barthet and Simon Dixon, ISMIR 2011.

Software:

Sonic Visualiser: The aim of Sonic Visualiser is to be the first program you reach for when want to study a musical recording rather than simply listen to it. Sonic Visualiser is of particular interest to anyone looking for a friendly way to take a look at what lies inside the audio file.

• Sonic Visualiser, Library Edition
• Main Sonic Visualiser website

Partners:

We are working with:

Secondary schools

Secondary school music classes are a prime place where people talk about their differing ideas of music – both their own "common-sense" cultural understandings, and the concepts conveyed by the curriculum. But how do these two relate to each other, and to the information that can be analysed and visualised using digital music technologies?

We are undertaking ethnographic observation of secondary school music classes, to illuminate these issues for the music informatics research community, and to drive technical developments which will be targeted at music education.

The British Library

The British Library (BL) has a catalogue of 3.5 million sound recordings, approximately half of which are in a digital format, including many unique historic items, which visitors can listen to in the Library's Reading Rooms while taking notes with paper and pencil. No tools are provided in the Reading Rooms, and the data can not be taken off site due to copyright regulations. The current situation hinders contemporary research, which aims to complement listeners' impressions with precise measurements of musical features. User feedback regarding deployment of analysis and visualisation tools at the BL, undertaken as a preliminary study, indicated the potential to transform musicology research.

We are undertaking ethnographic observation of users of the BL's audio material, and working with the BL on future technical developments.

Researchers

Dr Simon Dixon - Principal Investigator
Prof Mark Sandler - Co-investigator
Dr Mathieu Barthet - Research Assistant
Dr Dan Stowell - Research Assistant

Sponsor

EPSRC Grant EP/I001832/1: £250,102, 13 September 2010 – 12 March 2012