The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on the International Conference on Music Information Retrieval, a meeting that covers “harnessing the power of computers to analyze and manage the world of sound,” which convened at Drexel University recently. It sounds like an interesting event for any fan of music.
“Need a friendly guide for a live performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony? A computer program developed at Swarthmore College and Drexel can meet your needs by monitoring the progress of the orchestra and supplying written lyrics and commentary at just the right time.
“Can’t get the hang of improvising a jazz tune on the piano? Looking for music that exactly matches the tempo of your morning jog? Unable to remember the name of that catchy tune stuck in your head? Sophisticated statistical software can guide the way in each case, to hear the various exhibitors tell it.”
The story teases with hints at software that “had the whiff of things that could end up in iPods in the next 18 months, perhaps to help listeners sort through an unruly music collection.”
A key attraction at the conference is a “shootout” (maybe better called a “cutting contest”) between music-analysis programs from different universities. “Entrants from more than a dozen countries competed in 18 tasks, using their computers to ‘listen’ to selections of music, then identify such things as the genre, mood, composer, or title. The eventual goal: to help people search for music they might like by combing through millions of audio files in a database.” —Scott Carlson
