SWE Conference 2007

is in New York, violin 2 and the cello are in San Francisco. She is in London. Strategically placed microphones around each player simulate the exact locations of the other players as if they were all in the same room. They begin Beethoven’s Quartet for Strings No. 16 in F Major. With a network speed almost that of light- and low-latency, multichannel streaming, the time delay is almost imperceptible. Listeners from around the world enjoy each unique moment of the relationship between players. “We have been researching how to use the Internet to connect people up remotely to let them interact musically,” says Mark Bocko, Ph.D., chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Rochester and a founding member of the university’s Music Research Lab. As he points out, it’s a big challenge, as musical interaction cannot tolerate much delay. However, he and other researchers at the Frost School of Music, Wright State University, the Banff Centre, and the Center for Computer Research and Acoustics at Stanford University can now write software that delays the sound less than telephone lines. “Fifty milliseconds is tolerable to play a duet in a satisfying way,” says Dr. Bocko. He has done experiments with the limits that musicians will accept. He Have Fun With Music Enjoying music means listening to it, playing it, and even composing it. Through the wonders of the Internet, viewers can do all of this. Though certainly not a comprehensive list, the Web sites below offer ways to listen, play, and compose music. Music Computation and Cognition Lab at the University of Southern California http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~mucoaco (includes links to research project-descriptions) The OMax Project page at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), France http://recherche.ircam.fr/equipes/repmus/OMax The Music-Plus-One Project at Indiana University, Bloomington http://xavier.informatics.indiana.edu/~craphael/music_plus_one Interactive Audio Lab at Northwestern University http://music.cs.northwestern.edu Electronic Music Foundation http://www.emf.org/ International Computer Music Foundation http://computermusic.org/ Women On the Web ElectronMedia http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~wowem/ Haile’s Web site http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~gilwein/pow.htm You can compose music www.hyperscore.com is also conducting research into automated transcription of music so that software will “listen” to music and write it down. In this instance, machines lag behind trained musicians who can do this far more accurately. From the Banff Centre, Theresa Leonard, director of Audio Music and Sound, and previous editor of the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, mentions a string quartet that recently collaborated with a musician at Stanford University and other performances with pianists in different locations, who were able to react to each other in almost real time. “Many people are working on audio research by understanding how we hear so that we can transmit music more effectively,” she notes. As it is now, they have not reached the point where whole orchestras can interact. From her background as a trained pianist and with extensive experience in audio engineering, Leonard looks at two sides of the impact of technology on music. On the one side people now expect perfection in recordings, especially when using the huge speaker systems and surround sound available today. Even recordings from Carnegie Hall have some editing. On the flip side, however, iPods are more about “capturing the music,” as she puts it, rather than fidelity to the actual sounds. Others are also researching these remote musical relationships. At USC’s Integrated Media Systems Center, Dr. Chew and colleagues determined through experiments that if one delayed a musician’s sound feedback from their instruments to their ears to line up with their remote partner’s/partners’ incoming sound, the delay threshold can increase. For instance, a delay threshold could increase from 50 milliseconds to 65 milliseconds for a fast rhythmic classical piece. Researchers at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) and at the CNAM CEDRIC laboratory in Paris, France, also are conducting related experiments. Al fine The list of research areas in music keeps getting longer and longer: digital preservation and representation of music scores; making electronic music more expressive; and software applications that recognize a few bars of a hummed tune, then name the piece of music. Whether it’s recording music, playing it, composing it, or listening to it, the effect of technology on music leaves researchers and musicians constantly playing catch-up, even if the technology stays where it is and doesn’t change, Dr. Smith from Stanford University’s CCRMA reflects. “The technology is there, the know-how is there. The critical resource is how much we can learn.” I 30 SWE CONFERENCE 2007 http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~mucoaco http://recherche.ircam.fr/equipes/repmus/OMax http://xavier.informatics.indiana.edu/~craphael/music_plus_one http://music.cs.northwestern.edu http://www.emf.org/ http://computermusic.org/ http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~wowem/ http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~gilwein/pow.htm www.hyperscore.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of SWE Conference 2007

SWE - Annual Conference Issue - October 2007 Contents President’s Note View from the Executive Suite Editor’s Page Reader’s Forum Is the Engineering Workplace “Warming” for Women? The Music of Technology Going Green in Tennessee Program Development Grants FY08 Officers Formally Inducted Membership Information A&B FY07 Membership Meeting Minutes Engineering World Career Toolbox Point of View Book Review SWE Smiles SWE Scrapbook Corporate Partnership Council Celebrating the 2007 SWE Award Recipients Spotlight on Students Conference Sponsors and Program Overview Thursday Conference Schedule Corporate Members Heritage Club Friday Conference Schedule Saturday Conference Schedule Opportunity Index

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