music-research@HPLPM.HPL.HP.COM (10/21/90)
Music-Research Digest Sun, 21 Oct 90 Volume 5 : Issue 87
Today's Topics:
Administrivia: US Archive Server
Optical musical score recognition (3 msgs)
The Lisp Kernel
*** Send contributions to Music-Research@uk.ac.oxford.prg
*** Send administrative requests to Music-Research-Request
*** Overseas users should reverse UK addresses and give gateway if necessary
*** e.g. Music-Research@prg.oxford.ac.uk
*** or Music-Research%prg.oxford.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
*** Back issues, index, etc.: send "help" in a message to archive-server
*** @uk.ac.oxford.prg (in the UK) or @hplpm.hpl.hp.com (elsewhere)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 90 09:08:38 BST
From: The Moderator (Stephen Page) <music-research-request@uk.ac.oxford.prg>
Subject: Administrivia: US Archive Server
To: music-research
Message-ID: <9010210808.AA02054@msc0.prg.ox.ac.uk>
Apologies to anyone who has been trying to reach the archive server
using the old address on the "bartok" machine. I forgot to change the
header on the mailer when Brad Rubenstein left as US distributor.
The correct address is now shown above. However, I believe that Peter
Marvit <marvit@hplpm.hpl.hp.com>, the US redistributor, has been
having troubles with getting this to run on his site. He's still
working on it!
We also still seem to have a problem with hplpm.hpl.hp.com eating the
body of messages. Peter's working on that too. Good luck, Peter!
------------------------------
Date: 19 Oct 90 16:31:42 GMT
From: Dave Baines <dwb%cs.ed.ac.uk%edcastle%ukc%mcsun@net.uu.uunet>
Subject: Optical musical score recognition
To: music-research@prg
Message-ID: <714@skye.cs.ed.ac.uk>
I am posting this for a student here who does not have access to UseNet so
please send any replies directly to him via E-mail.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Optical Musical Score Recognition
I am seeking information for my final year honours project at the department
of Computer Science, Edinburgh University. The project involves interpreting
musical features (notes, sharp signs etc) from an image produced by an optical
scanner. Has anyone ever tackled a similar project, or know of any literature
in this field ?
Thanks in advance,
David Bainbridge (dxb@lfcs.ed.ac.uk)
------------------------------
Date: 21 Oct 90 04:43:28 GMT
From: John M Davison <davisonj%en.ecn.purdue.edu%noose.ecn.purdue.edu%samsung%zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu@edu.ohio-state.cis.tut>
Subject: Optical musical score recognition
To: music-research@prg
Message-ID: <1990Oct21.044328.12156@ecn.purdue.edu>
The WABOT-1 musical robot, which is pictured on the cover of
the Spring 1986 _Computer_Music_Journal_ and written up in the Summer
1986 _Computer_Music_Journal_, could (unless I am mistaken) scan a
page of sheet music in about ten seconds and convert the score to a
sequence which WABOT-1 would subsequently play. (The sheet music was
scanned in one shot; real-time scanning, such as a human performer
would do, was not implemented.)
-davisonj@en.ecn.purdue.edu
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 90 09:03:11 BST
From: Stephen.Page@prg
Subject: Optical musical score recognition
To: dxb@uk.ac.ed.lfcs
Cc: music-research
Message-ID: <9010210803.AA02026@msc0.prg.ox.ac.uk>
I'm not aware of any recent work in this field (it seems to have died away...)
but here are the basic references for foundation work in the field:
Clarke, A.T., B.M. Browne, and M.P. Thorne. "Inexpensive Optical Character
Recognition of Musical Notation: A New Alternative for Publishers." In
_Computers_and_Music_Research_. Proceedings of a conference held on 11-14 April
1988. [Ed. Alan Marsden.] Lancaster: Centre for Research into the Applications
of Computers to Music, Univ. of Lancaster, [1988], pp. 84-87.
Kassler, Michael. "An Essay Towards Specification of a Music-Reading Machine."
In _Musicology_and_the_Computer_. Ed. Barry S. Brook. New York: City Univ.
of New York Press, 1970, pp. 151-175.
Kassler, Michael. "Optical Character-Recognition of Printed Music: A Review
of Two Dissertations." _Prespectives_of_New_Music_, 11, No. 1 (Fall-Winter
1972), p. 250.
Prerau, David S. "Computer Pattern Recognition of Printed Music." _AFIPS_
Conference_Proceedings_, 39 (1971), 153-62.
Prerau, David S. "Computer Pattern Recognition of Standard Engraved Musical
Notation," Diss. MIT. 1970.
Prerau, David S. "DO-RE-MI: A Program that Recognises Music Notation.
_Computers_and_the_Humanities_, 9 (1975), 25-29.
Roads, Curtis. "The Tsukuba Musical Robot." _Computer_Music_Journal_, 10,
Mo. 2 (Summer 1986), 39-43.
Here's an excerpt from my dissertation (Stephen Dowland Page, "Computer Tools
for Music Information Retreival," Diss. Oxford 1988, pp. 43-44):
"The use of a device which can scan a printed score is, in theory, the most
effective method of music input. It allows exact, uninterpreted input of the
written score. [Previously I had discussed the differences between written,
performed, and perceived music.]
Michael Kassler set out an abstract specification for a "music-reading machine"
in 1970. He defined the input (a certain vocabulary of musical symbols) and
output (a stream of binary digits) of a machine he called "M". Although this
is an interesting exercise, "M" has never been built and probably will not be
built for many years. There are many practical problems to be solved at a
lower level--for example, the recognition of simple note shapes.
Although optical scanning of printed letterpress is at an advanced stage,[1]
music has many more complexities than text, such as the variable shape of
slurs, the wide variety of music fonts, and the two-dimensional nature of a
score, which must be recognised by a machine. David Prerau, in his 1970
dissertation, put forward optical methods which have been successfully
tested on a small fragment of two-part music. A recent Japanese experiment,
a "musical robot" which can play music on a keyboard, incorporates optical
scanning. Beyond these few projects, development of optical scanning has
been very limited.
[1] The Kurzweil Data Entry Machine has been in use in literary studies for
a number of years. After "training" on a font it can read pages of text into
the computer faster, and more reliably, than a person can type them. Already
this machine has been made obsolescent by faster, more 'intelligent'
machines."
This is a tricky area. Watch your scope!
By the way, Michael Kassler is now connected to an email network, as
michael@extro.ucc.su.oz.au .
- Dr Stephen Page
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4 Harwood Terrace Technology and Systems Integration Division
Fulham Andersen Consulting
London SW6 2AB 2 Arundel Street
U.K. London WC2R 3LT
U.K.
JANET sdpage@uk.ac.oxford.prg | Work 071-438 5000
ARPA sdpage%prg.oxford.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk | +44-71-438 5000
UUCP ...!ukc!ox-prg!sdpage | Home 071-371 9981
BITNET sdpage%uk.ac.oxford.prg@AC.UK | +44-71-371 9981
Fax: 071-831 1133 Telex: 8812711
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 90 16:56:43 -0700
From: John Rahn <jrahn@edu.washington.u.blake>
Subject: The Lisp Kernel
To: music-research@prg
Message-ID: <9010162356.AA09750@blake.u.washington.edu>
The Lisp Kernel
Is freely available by anonymous FTP:
FTP BLAKE.U.WASHINGTON.EDU
CD PUB/RAHN
MGET *
This is a portable environment for composition in a subset of
Common Lisp. It runs on the NeXT in Franz Lisp, in Gold Hill CL
on IBM ATs (with enough memory), in Kyoto Common Lisp on Vaxen
or whatever, and in general in any CL. It has interfaces to CSound,
Music4P, and the NeXT MusicKit. Interfaces to other synthesis software
are easy to make by editing an existing interface procedure. One file
is a talk from the 1988 AI and Music conference in Germany; others include
source code. An article on it is scheduled to appear in Computer
Music Journal 14/4.
John Rahn
jrahn@blake.u.washington.edu
------------------------------
End of Music-Research Digest