VCMM is a monthly gathering of the academics and practitioners involved in computer music research (at large), including digital signal processing, music information retrieval, new interfaces for musical expression and all the related fields of inquiry. Each month, two researchers will present their work and afterwards there will be a short discussion period.
Should you be interested in participating in a meeting, or would like to find out more about the VCMM, please use the contact form available at the bottom of this page.
upcoming meetings
Where:Great Northern Way Campus Boardroom (above reception in building two at MDM)
When: Friday, December 3rd (2010), from 4pm-6pm
Speakers:
Nicolas d'Alessandro on Performative Voice Synthesis, Voice Beyond Text-to-Speech
Vocal production is one of the most ubiquitous and expressive activities of people, yet understanding its production and synthesis remains elusive. When vocal synthesis is elevated for new forms of singing and sound production, fundamental changes to culture and musical expression eventually emerge. Since 2003, two complementary projects in digital vocal instrument making have been developed in separate labs and are now about to merge for making a new leap forward in this field. On one side, DiVA (Digitally Ventriloquized Actor) is exploring interactive gestures for articulating intelligible speech, phoneme by phoneme. On the other side, HandSketch is providing a tablet-based digital instrument for performing expressive singing with refined voice quality control. In a near future, we expect to reach a new generation of talking machines, interactive and expressive, that would open new doors in computer music performance. The presentation will go through the assumptions of these various projects, present several demonstrations of existing talking/singing prototypes (video and live) and discuss further directions of the project.
One step in Music, one step in Engineering. The short career of Nicolas d'Alessandro is always emphasizing this duality. Right after entering at Faculté Polytechnique of Mons (Belgium) in 1999, he shows a strong interest in merging these two aspects. This dream moves to reality a few years later when he meets Prof. Thierry Dutoit (TCTS lab). Together they activate a convention between Mons and Montréal (Canada). Therefore Nicolas becomes the first belgian student to achieve his Master thesis with Caroline Traube in LIAM, Université de Montréal. He comes back to TCTS lab in 2004 for realizing a PhD thesis with Thierry Dutoit. There he develops several digital instruments for generating expressive voice in realtime, including the HandSketch. He obtains his PhD in November 2009 and takes off for Vancouver a few days after, in order to take a Research Assistant position at UBC (University of British Columbia). He is working there today, in the perfect continuity of his passions for voice and contemporary music, leading the DiVA project (talking avatars) with Sidney Fels (MAGIC lab) and co-leading the UBC laptop orchestra with Bob Pritchard (School of Music).
Stefan Smulovitz on Kenaxis
Kenaxis transforms the laptop into an expressive instrument. Developed by Stefan Smulovitz over the last 10 years for use in improvisational and compositional settings, this easy to use software allows for live sampling and real time sound manipulation including looping, granulation, and convolution. There is also Kenaxis Surround for surround sound playback: spin, spiral or exact placement of sounds are all possible in realtime. All welcome!
Award-winning composer, collaborator, violist and laptop artist Stefan Smulovitz has created more than 50 live scores for films and performs with leading improvisors including Fred Frith, Evan Parker and Uri Caine. Kenaxis -- Stefan's game-changing software -- is used by musicians around the world, and his numerous collaborative creations have been developed for theatre, dance, art installations, and DVD-ROMs.
past meetings
Presentations from Wednesday, October 6th, 2010:(click to show)
Kenneth Newby(UFV) on Transience - Composing and Synchronizing Audio-Visual Media for an Urban Screen
Kenneth will share details of a recent audio-visual public art project for the Surrey Urban Screen. Transience uses machine-vision based interaction and a process-based algorithmic music composition technique to synchronize variable musical structures with a procedural animation diffusion system. www.surreyurbanscreen.ca
Kenneth Newby, BA, MFA (Simon Fraser University), is a media artist and researcher whose practice explores the use of artist-designed software and media diffusion techniques to enable media performances and installations rich in aural and visual ideas. This practice includes works of participatory media performance and installation, infinite game design, electronic and acoustic music, software tools for composition of music and animation, as well as interdisciplinary collaborative art and research with artists in various disciplines including Canadian First Nations artists and other international intercultural projects.
His writings on media art have been published in key journals such as the Journal of Media Practice and the Canadian Theatre Review. A book chapter on interaction research and design for museum experience was published in Designing Effective Communications: Creating Contexts for Clarity and Meaning. He has written for and presented at a variety of conferences including Practice as Research in Performance, Bristol; Computer Art Congress, Paris; Digital Arts & Culture, Melbourne; Consciousness Reframed: Qi and Complexity, Beijing; CeC & CaC, New Delhi; Interactive Futures, Victoria, Transnet, Vancouver; ISEA, Belfast; and Toward a Science of Consciousness, Hong Kong.
Kenneth is faculty at the University of the Fraser Valley, Visual Arts Department, New Media and an Adjunct Professor in Creative Studies, Media Art at the University of British Columbia. He is regular visiting faculty for graduate seminars in Computational Poetics at the University of Arts in Belgrade, Interdisciplinary Post-graduate Program in Polymedia Arts and has presented workshops in Media Performance at the Indonesian National Academy of Arts (STSI) in Solo, Central Java.
His past work includes interaction design, research and creation of adaptive audio techniques, interactive audio, music, speech and immersive sound at Electronic Arts and Pixar Animation Studios.
Gordon Durity & Iain Macanulty (EA) on Contextually Driven Dynamic Music System for Games
Game audio must be integrated with game play in order to succeed as a soundtrack. For music this means embedding the music into the game rather than simply playing music on top of the game. We achieve this by designing a music playback system that includes opportunities for musical selection, mixing and music effects that can be controlled dynamically, and also by providing a logic system that can make control decisions based on game play. Thus we have a two layered approach to dynamic music - the logic layer, and the playback layer. In general the resultant music playing back must have the appropriate commercial appeal and "movie score-like" production quality aesthetic. This presentation will demonstrate both layers of the dynamic music system as well as choices made to achieve the final artistic goals.
Gordon Durity has over twenty-five years experience in creating soundtracks, writing songs and producing audio in the areas of film, television, games, multimedia, and album production. He currently serves as a Studio Audio Director at Electronic Arts Canada, the largest developer of video games in the world. There Gordon designs and supervises the creation and implementation of audio for various titles, works with technical staff to develop new cutting edge technologies, and is part of the team looking in to new online opportunities for online-based gaming in Asia. He also sits on the AIAS sound panel where he's involved in adjudicating for award the audio for the top games of the year. As a composer, Gordon has written scores for feature and short films, television, radio, dance, theatre, runway shows and games. He has worked with many artists on songs in a variety of styles ranging from hip-hop, r&b, gospel, to country, to reggae, to modern rock. Gordon has produced and written with many international artists and has had songs charted all over the world. As a composer, sound effects editor and mixer for film and television, he has worked for USA Network, Fox, Disney, Paramount, CBC, BBC, Trimark, NFB, PBS, ABC, and many independents, delivering audio environments ranging from mono to Dolby Surround to 5.1 DVD. Gordon has a degree in real-time interactive midi driven music systems and 20th century composition. Gordon received a Leo Award in 2005 for his score to the documentary The Life and Times of Daniel Igali, and a 2006 Leo Award for his sound design work on the feature drama, Eve and the Firehorse
Iain Macanulty has been programming audio at Electronic Arts since 1992. He has spent most of that time collaborating with other programmers and sound artists to build systems for sports commentary, crowds, sfx, and music, but the work is still not finished.
Presentations from Friday, November 13th, 2009:(click to show)
Miles Thorogood on Sound environments: Introspective and social
The advancement and accessibility of technology has facilitated a multiplicity of interactions between sound and the body. Miles discusses a number of projects that have investigated interaction through sound within different contexts. One commonality running through these projects is that of immersion, ranging from introspection to social connection. From this basis Miles explores the correlation between sound or tangible media and the human experience.
Miles Thorogood is a practicing sound artist and research student at Emily Carr University, who builds software and hardware technologies for adaptive and interactive artwork systems. Miles has worked with Australia's CSIRO in the development of projects to facilitate physical connection over computer networks, The Australian National University and the Canberra Rep Theatre 3 in the development of interactive immersive environments. He has been involved across disciplines as a freelance media artist and creative and technical consultant with Canadian and international media artists.
James Maxwell on Hierarchical Sequential Memory for Music: A Cognitive Model
We outline a new machine-learning framework called the Hierarchical Sequential Memory for Music (HSMM). The HSMM is an adaptation of the Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) framework, designed to make it better suited to musical applications. The HSMM is an online learner, capable of recognition, generation, continuation, and completion of musical structures.
James Maxwell was born in Vancouver, Canada. He studied composition in Vancouver with Owen Underhill and David MacIntyre, and in Prague with Ladislav Kubik. In 2001 he completed his MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies at Simon Fraser University. His work has been broadcast on CBC's "West Coast Performance" and "Two New Hours", and has been performed in Canada, the US, Europe, China, and the UK. In the summer of 2000 he received the audience prize in Vancouver New Music's BC Emerging Composers Competition. He has worked collaboratively in contemporary dance, theatre, and film, creating music for choreographers Claire French and Helen Walkley, for director Mallory Catlett, and for film makers Alex Williams and Alison Beda. He is also interested in wider and more diverse collaborations, working with visual artist Kathleen Ritter on a project for Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre in Kingston, Ontario, with writer Caleb Johnson on the Western Front's "Intersections" project, and in an upcoming collaboration with Berlin-based artists Hadley+Maxwell for the Seattle Art Museum in 2010. In 2009 he premiered limina, commissioned by flutist Mark McGregor's duo Tiresias, and is continuing a collaboration with choreographer Claire French and film maker Allison Beda on a series of one-minute dance films. Recent concert music commissions include co existere, for the Touch of Brass Ensemble, which premiered during Vertical Orchestra 2008, at the Vancouver Public Library, and diffusus, which was recently released on McGregor's latest CD Different Stones.. In May 2009 his most recent concert work, commissioned by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, was premiered at the Orpheum theatre. In 2007, while living in the UK, he established "mr. wheet", an electronica-inspired side-project, integrating elements of his concert music language with his musical beginnings as a kit drummer. The debut CD, "What to do when you find yourself in Brighouse", was released in December 2008.
James is also active as a researcher and programmer in the field of computer applications for interactive music composition. He is currently a doctoral student at Simon Fraser University, where he is exploring the design and development of computer-assisted composition tools, with a focus on using intelligent, adaptive systems as compositional "collaborators."
Presentations from Friday, September 25th, 2009:(click to show)
Barry Truax(SFU) on Interacting with Inner and Outer Sonic Complexity: from Microsound to Soundscape Composition
It is possible to think of the two extremes of the world of sound as the inner domain of microsound (less than 50 ms) where frequency and time are interdependent, and the external world of sonic complexity, namely the soundscape. In terms of sonic design, the computer is increasingly providing tools for dealing with each of these domains, such as granular synthesis and multi-channel soundscape composition. The models of interaction involved with the complexity of each of these domains are instructive, and will be presented with sound examples.
Barry Truax is a Professor in both the School of Communication and the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University where he teaches courses in acoustic communication and electroacoustic music. He has worked with the World Soundscape Project, editing its Handbook for Acoustic Ecology, and has published a book Acoustic Communication dealing with all aspects of sound and technology. As a composer, Truax is best known for his work with the PODX computer music system which he has used for tape solo works and those which combine tape with live performers or computer graphics. In 1991 his work, Riverrun, was awarded the Magisterium at the International Competition of Electroacoustic Music in Bourges, France, a category open only to electroacoustic composers of 20 or more years experience.
Leonard J. Paul on Video Game Audio Prototyping with Half-Life 2
This paper describes how to utilize the Half-Life 2 (HL2) Source engine and Open Sound Control (OSC) to communicate real-time sound event calls to a Pure Data (PD) sound driver. Game events are sent from Half-Life 2 to the PD patch via OSC which triggers the sound across a network. The advantage of this approach is that the PD sound driver can have both the sample data and the sound behaviors modified in real-time, thus avoiding the conventional need for a lengthy recompilation stage. This technique allows for rapid iterative game audio sound design through prototyping which increases the efficiency of the work-flow of the game sound artist working on the current seventh-generation consoles and PC video games. This method is also of interest to researchers of game audio who wish to experiment with novel game audio techniques within the context of a game while it is running.
Leonard Paul attained his Honours degree in Computer Science at Simon Fraser University in BC, Canada with an Extended Minor in Music concentrating in Electroacoustics. He has a fifteen year history in composing, sound design and coding for video games working for companies such as Electronic Arts, Backbone Entertainment, Radical Entertainment, moderngroove entertainment, Rockstar Vancouver and Black Box Games.
This talk will discuss a proposed physical modeling technique whereby a waveguide structure is replaced by a low-latency convolution operation with an impulse response that is either measured, modified, and/or constructed parametrically. By doing so, there is no longer the constraint that successive arrivals be uniformly spaced, nor need they decay exponentially as they must in a waveguide structure. The structure of an impulse response corresponding to an acoustic tube will be discussed, with possible synthesis parameters identified. Suggestions are made for departing from a physically-constrained structure, looking in particular at impulse responses that are mathematically-based and/or that correspond to hybrid or multi-phonic instruments consisting of two or more interleaved impulse responses. This work is ultimately intended to be used in real-time performance, affording modern wind instrument players the ability to extend their instruments in addition to the current practice of extending playing technique. The proposed convolutional technique permits sound exploration that is no longer limited by the physical structure of the instrument being played, resulting is possible exploration of instrument extensions that are both physical and completely imagined.
Tamara Smyth is Assistant Professor of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University. Previously, she served as the Technical Director of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustic (CCRMA) at Stanford University, after completing a Ph.D in Computer-Based Music Theory and Acoustics, and a Ph.D minor in Electrical Engineering, under the supervision of Julius O. Smith. Tamara also holds degrees in Music from McGill University (Piano Performance and Computer Applications to Music) and New York University (Music Technology). Tamara's research merges the areas of physical modelling synthesis, digital signal processing, musical acoustics and human computer interaction, for the development of new musical instrument technology and interactive sound sources.
James Maxwell on Hierarchical Sequential Memory for Music: A Cognitive Model
We propose a design and implementation for a music information database and query system, the MusicDB, which can be used for data-driven algorithmic composition. Inspired by David Cope's ideas surrounding composition by "music recombinance", the MusicDB is implemented as a Java package, and is loaded in MaxMSP using the mxj external. The MusicDB contains a music analysis module, capable of extracting musical information from standard MIDI files, and a search engine. The search engine accepts queries in the form of a simple six-part syntax, and can return a variety of different types of musical information, drawing on the encoded knowledge of musical form stored in the database.
James Maxwell was born in Vancouver, Canada. He studied composition in Vancouver with Owen Underhill and David MacIntyre, and in Prague with Ladislav Kubik. In 2001 he completed his MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies at Simon Fraser University. His work has been broadcast on CBC's "West Coast Performance" and "Two New Hours", and has been heard in Canada, the US, Europe, China, and the UK. In the summer of 2000 he received the audience prize in Vancouver New Music's BC Emerging Composers Competition. He has worked collaboratively in contemporary dance, theatre, and film, creating music for choreographers Claire French and Helen Walkley, for director Mallory Catlett, and for film makers Alex Williams and Alison Beda.
James is currently a doctoral student at Simon Fraser University, where he is researching the field of computer-assisted composition, and designing intelligent, adaptive systems to act as compositional "collaborators."
Genetic algorithms have been used in music for several years - the problem has always been how to evaluate the results, particularly in realtime. Arne Eigenfeldt will present the latest version of his interactive system, Kinetic Engine, and describe his solution to this issue. Kinetic Engine has been used in performance to control robotic percussionists, as well as a compositional assistant in composing works for percussion quartet and a new work for guitar and cello.
Arne Eigenfeldt's music has been performed through North America, Europe, and Asia, and his research into intelligent realtime systems has been presented at ICMC, NIME, SMC, EMS, and SEAMUS. He teaches music and technology at Simon Fraser University's School for the Arts. Feel free to browse Arne's research or to check out the upcoming "MahaDeviBot Sessions" performance in Vancouver on March 13 at 8PM.
Keith Hamel(UBC) on Developing an Integrated Interactive Music Performance Environment
While interactive performance environments such as Max/MSP and Pd allow a wide variety of user interactions in live performance, they are not well integrated into most composers' working environments. Many composer writing interactive computer music create instrumental scores using music notation programs, design interactive patches to create electroacoustic sounds (or process incoming audio) and develop strategies for synchronizing live instruments to the interactive environment (often triggering sections manually). Usually this working method involves several disconnected software programs and often results in inefficient simulation and rehearsal procedures. The author has been working on the design and development of a an integrated interactive music performance environment by extending his music notation program NoteAbilityPro to support remote messaging and synchronization between live performers and the notated score using score-following techniques. The current state of this software environment will be presented along with a discussion of possible future developments.
Should you have any questions or are interested in finding out more about the VCMM, please use the form below. If you are looking to contact individuals associated with the VCMM, please visit their respective websites linked through the members section of this site.
