Colloquium: Jonathan Abel and Matt Wright
Jonathan Abel - Mr. Cable's messed up reverberators, the Spherlioni family business and other topics
Abstract: This talk describes some recent room acoustics and signal processing work that's got my interest and time. On that list are a couple CCRMA-related projects, including Icons of Sound, which aims to recreate the experience of Byzantine chant in Hagia Sophia nearly 1,500 years after the fact, and which inspired the Spherlionis to build a 3D-printed spherical microphone array. In the category of unusual local acoustic spaces in need of time-frequency analysis and physical modeling, there's F# Alley (across from Antonio's Nut House, and well worth the price of admission---bring an opera singer); and under the heading of "different" audio effects, there is the modal reverberator---thank you Mr. Cable---which integrates pitch shifting and distortion into a synthetic reverberator architecture. Finally on the list are signal processing analyses of Alvin Lucier's "I am sitting in a room" and Carl Stone's "Sukothai," both of which explore the sonics of iteratively applied audio processes.
Matt Wright - Part 2 of Matt's abridged entire career, focusing on issues of rhythm
Abstract: Matt presents shifty looping, machine learning of micro timing, a clave-centric beat tracker specifically for Afro-Cuban music, bar wrapping visualization of micro timing in metric musical contexts, my dissertation work with Perceptual Attack Time, and Afro-Brazilian percussion ensembles.
The full abstract for Matt's two-part presentation is reproduced below:
Abstract: The notion of "musicianship" or "musicality" is essential in musical education, but is typically conceived very narrowly in terms of centuries-old skills of translating to and from written musical notation. Much of my research has sought to widen the idea of what musicianship is, and how to develop and apply it in new contexts. I will bring several past and ongoing research projects into the discussion, including Open Sound Control, my list of desiderata for (computer-based) musical instruments, the CREATE Ensemble, sinusoidal modeling and scrubbing, shifty looping, machine learning of microtiming, bar wrapping, and Perceptual Attack Time. Also a few words about the AlloSphere, which could be framed as a project attempting to apply theories and practices of musicality to broader scientific inquiry. In short I will blast through way too many projects in a very short time, hoping to spark some deeper discussions and collaborations.
