Searching for musical treasure: how to find the formula for a hit single

OMRAS2: Online Music Recognition and Searching 2.0

Tuesday, 14 November 2006

Where are the good songs in that two million song on-line music store? Are undiscovered works by Handel, Vivaldi or Purcell hidden among the items in a digitised score collection? Is there a mathematical formula for hit singles?

These are just some of the questions researchers from Queen Mary, University of London, and Goldsmiths, University of London, are hoping to answer with their new research project, OMRAS2. With a value of some £2.5m, OMRAS2 is the first ‘Large Grant’ announced by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The grant will employ 12 people and involve partnership with four other universities.

“We want to revolutionise how musicology – the study of music - is done,” explains Professor Mark Sandler, Director of Queen Mary’s Centre for Digital Music and lead researcher at Queen Mary. “That means making it easy to ‘look under the hood’ of the music, perhaps by understanding how the soprano performs her vibrato, how the bass player combines rhythm and harmony, and so on.”

The core scientific research will be on computational and mathematical methods to enable rapid searching and browsing of very large collections of scores and recorded music. But one of the motivations for OMRAS2 is not only to do scientific research on music, but to enable music academics (musicologists) and others to use the tools and knowledge that the scientists provide.

“We’re bringing together graphic designers, computer scientists, musicians, audio engineers and search engine experts,” adds Dr Michael Casey, Director of the Media Futures Laboratory at Goldsmiths Digital Studios, and their lead researcher. “OMRAS2 will help music researchers investigate interesting aspects of music; what variations of that riff in Purple Haze did Jimi Hendrix play; how do different pianists interpret Bach's Goldberg Variations; what aspects of a song make it a number one hit?”

OMRAS2 will also look at how music and information about music (like CD insert booklets) will be enjoyed at home - not just downloading, but searching, recommending, and browsing.

“We want musicology – a subject only known in universities – to become mainstream, so anyone, in their living room can find out more about the music they love.”

Further Information

‘OMRAS2: A Distributed Research Environment for Music Informatics and Computational Musicology’ commences on 1 January 2007 and is worth £2.5m over three years. As well as Queen Mary and Goldsmiths, other partners include King’s College London, Lancaster and Royal Holloway.

For more information please contact:

Siân Halkyard
Senior Communications Officer
Queen Mary, University of London
(0) 20 7882 7454
(0) 7970 096 175
s.halkyard@qmul.ac.uk
www.qmul.ac.uk

OR

Professor Mark Sandler
Queen Mary University of London
(0) 20 7882 7680
mark.sandler@elec.qmul.ac.uk

or

Dr Michael Casey
Goldsmiths College London
(0) 20 7919 7867
m.casey@gold.ac.uk

Notes to Editors

Queen Mary, University of London

Queen Mary is one of the leading colleges in the federal University of London, with over 11,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students, and an academic and support staff of around 2,600. Queen Mary is a research university, with over 80 per cent of research staff working in departments where research is of international or national excellence (RAE 2001). It has a strong international reputation, with around 20 per cent of students coming from over 100 countries.

The College has 21 academic departments and institutes organised into three sectors: Science and Engineering; Humanities, Social Sciences and Laws; and the School of Medicine and Dentistry. It has an annual turnover of £200 million, research income worth £43 million, and it generates employment and output worth nearly £400 million to the UK economy each year. Queen Mary’s roots lie in four historic colleges: Queen Mary College, Westfield College, St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College and the London Hospital Medical College.

The Centre for Digital Music comprises about 30 researchers, all studying the science and technology of music. With a current grant portfolio in excess of £3M, the Centre is one of the largest of its type in Europe.

Goldsmiths, University of London

Goldsmiths currently has nearly 9,000 students from around the world and offers a broad range of undergraduate, postgraduate, professional and adult education courses.Goldsmiths carries out world-class research in wide-ranging areas, and is home to over 20 research centres including the Centre for Cognition, Computation and Culture, the first multi-disciplinary research centre of its kind in the world, facilitating collaborative research across computing, music, visual arts, psychology, culture and other areas. The last RAE produced strong ratings with particular success for Anthropology, Sociology, English, Art and Design, Media and Communications, and Music which all achieved 5 or 5*.

Goldsmiths Digital Studios (www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/gds) is a hub of radical experimentation, fundamental investigations and innovative practices, forging links between digital technologies and artistic practice. It is a crucible for original theories, new departures in the technological arts and pioneering, and commercially viable, sustainable software products. Leading academic specialists with interests in computing, art, music, design and culture staff the Studios. The staff work closely with artists and digital media professionals - from the culture industries, film production, design consultancies, museums and galleries, interactive media content providers, software development houses, and hardware design laboratories - to explore and extend the use of today’s digital technology and to define and implement the art and design technologies of tomorrow.

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

The EPSRC is the main UK government agency for funding research and training in engineering and the physical sciences, investing around £500 million a year in a broad range of subjects – from mathematics to materials science, and from information technology to structural engineering.

The EPSRC operates to meet the needs of industry and society by working in partnership with universities to invest in people and scientific discovery and innovation. The knowledge and expertise gained maintains a technological leading edge, builds a strong economy and improves people's quality of life. The EPSRC also actively promotes public engagement in science, engineering and technology.