Modelling Musical Structures

Modelling musical structures is a research field prominent among mathematicians and computer scientists as well as musicologists, psychomusicologists and musicians. Constraint programming has been proved to be a highly appropriate technique in this field. For the task of automated music composition, in particular, constraints have been shown to describe composition principles in a declarative, natural, and, above all, efficient way since music composition knowledge is in fact a collection of conditions rather than a sort of cookery-book.Unfortunately, many approaches stress the technical aspects of applying constraints and do not think about the concrete role of constraints, i.e. about what music really should be. In general, the composer as an artist is more concerned about what he wants to say through his music than with theoretically (or socially or psychologically) established rules. This means that automated music composition needs practical goals in order to make sense. The role of those goals as well as musical constraints and constraint technologies that help to realize the goals are to be shown in this article. As a modelling example the system COPPELIA is introduced. It generates music on the basis of the structures, goals, and contents of given multimedia presentations. In this relatively young field of constraint application that does not supply such ideal, well-defined and closed sets of conditions as technical applications do, we find it very important to also present general thoughts about the sense of our application, about the development of composition constraints and the conditions under which these constraints work effectively.     

Development and evaluation of computer-aided music-learning system for the hearing impaired

Abstract   A computer-assisted music-learning system (CAMLS) has been developed to help the hearing impaired practice playing a musical melody. The music-learning performance is evaluated to test the usability of the system. This system can be a computer-supported learning tool for the hearing impaired to help them understand what pitch and tempo are, and then learn to play songs thereby increasing their interest in music classes and enhancing their learning performance. The results indicated that CAMLS could enhance hearing-impaired students' learning performance in a music course. A questionnaire survey also demonstrated that the computer-aided method did benefit hearing-impaired students in their music leaning. Actually, this system can also be applied to non-disabled students as a music-supportive tool to help their music learning.     

Design and implementation on matching between music and color

Color music has attracted great interest in real applications. However, the mismatching problem between music and color has not been resolved. This paper proposes a novel mechanism to map the corresponding relation between music and color, which is embedded into a device with a micro-processor to play music color flashing. The proposed mechanism deduces perfect fifth relation among the wavelengths of lights and determines 12 colors corresponding to musical notes of Twelve-tone equal temperament is determined. Specifically, when a piece of music is playing, the audio signal is sampled and transformed by Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). The method can judge color corresponding to a note and research the mixed light effect of RGB LED driven by PWM outputs. Extended experiments show that the effect of music playing with matching colors flashing in real time is reached, and the color of the mixed lights can automatically match with arbitrary music being played. The paper can reveal relationships between music and color from the perspective of frequency spectrum, and promote the development of the color music, which has broad applications.

     

How to Trap the Network Intruder

Abstract

There is a level of sensitivity to almost all data, but what is most important — keeping sensitive data sensitive or guaranteeing the integrity of the data? When it comes to sensitivity or integrity, access control models have provided several options. Yet, wouldn't a combination of access control models provide a more desirable result than just settling for one? Is it possible to have a slice of data sensitivity with a dollop of data integrity? In finding the answer to this question it must be understood exactly what an access control model is and, in terms of sensitivity and integrity, which models provide the best security.     

Scenario analysis,from BigData to black swan

Scenario analysis is a set of methodologies and techniques with the goal of generating strategic insight for decision and policy makers. Our aim for this paper is to overview the scenario analysis field in relation to the relatively new paradigms of BigData. The purpose of such an effort is to clarify where scenario analysis stands today relative to the myriad of data analytics approaches. In an era where the hype about BigData is growing at a breakneck speed, what role scenario analysis can still play? And what kind of synergy it can use to leverage the advances made in other forecasting methods? This paper tries to provide some elements for an answer.     

A Strategic Response to the Broad Spectrum of Internet Abuse

The primary responsibility of the Chief Privacy Officer (CPO) is to protect online consumer privacy by developing an organization's privacy policy and ensuring compliance with privacy laws and regulations. However, the explosive growth of Internet use for business has brought about an escalation of concerns including reduced consumer confidence in Internet-related business activities, risk of financial loss, and legal liability from sources categorized as external and internal to the organization. Does the new CPO position provide adequate consideration of the increasing risks? This article discusses the far-reaching types of misconduct and risks organizations face. the article concludes by proposing the strategic response of an expanded role for the CPO. in addition to overseeing Internet privacy issues, the newly defined role of Chief Privacy and Integrity Officer (CPIO) would encompass Internet integrity. This entails formulating or reformulating an expressed Internet use policy, undertaking ongoing training and other means to maintain awareness of issues, monitoring internal sources, implementing defenses against external sources, and securing adequate liability insurance. the effectiveness of this new role, in overseeing these responsibilities, would be determined by assessing current operations, implementing proactive measures to reduce potential misuse, and continuously keeping abreast of technological advances, legislative and regulatory initiatives, and new areas of vulnerability.     

A novel approach to learning music and piano based on mixed reality and gamification

Learning music has been demonstrated to provide many benefits for children. However, music students, especially beginners, often suffer from lack of motivation and even can be frustrated if their musical skills do not improve as they practice over and over. In such situations, they usually end up dropping out of music school. To face this challenge, in this work a novel approach based on mixed reality and gamification is proposed to motivate music students. This approach has been validated thanks to HoloMusic XP, a multimedia tool that helps students learn music and piano. The devised architecture that supports HoloMusic XP has been designed and developed to scale when new music concepts must be addressed. Thanks to the use of mixed reality, the usually steep learning curve for beginner students can be mitigated and complex music concepts can be simplified due to the use of visual metaphors. The system has been evaluated in a real environment by teachers and students to measure its effectiveness and usability. After conducting the experiments, an increase in the students’ motivation and a general understanding of the multimedia representation have been achieved.

     

Music - an aid to productivity

A series of experiments has investigated the relationship between the playing of background music during the performance of repetitive work and efficiency in performing such a task. The results give strong support to the contention that economic benefits can accure from the use of music in industry. The studies show that music is effective in raising efficiency in this type of work even when in competition with the unfavourable conditions produced by machine noise.     

Risk Management in Higher Education and Research in the Netherlands

This study examines risk in higher education and research on the basis of a classification into three domains. The practical utility of this division into three domains is that it makes it easier to see what risks are unique to higher education (custodianship of knowledge), what risks are dependent on developments in society (microcosm of society) and what risks faced by an educational establishment are no different from those facing any other organization (education as an organization). The results of a survey of the field (through questionnaires, meetings and interviews) show that higher education institutions still do not routinely have an integrated policy on safety, security and crisis management. Within individual institutions, there is little communication between the three. Institutions, staff and students have limited awareness of the range of risks to which they and their environment are exposed. At the same time, establishments tend not to share their experiences in this field with others. Even within individual institutions, there is often little involvement of staff and students in safety and security policy and its implementation.     

On the use of a multimedia platform for music education with handicapped children: A case study

The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for students with special learning needs is being particularly studied by the research community. Likewise, music has gained recognition through the years in the field of learning disabilities, playing lately a key role in providing a better quality of life to people with special needs. However, there is still a gap on the combination of ICT and music teaching tools. In this work, we present the results of a case study where students with disabilities took a 3-month introductory music course using the multimedia tool called PLAIME (PLAtform for the Integration of handicapped children in Music Education) developed by the same authors. The aims of this work are three-fold: i) to explore the capability of disabled students to acquire musical knowledge using PLAIME, ii) to measure the improvement in their ICT skills, and iii) to observe their behavior along the study. At the end of the program, students showed an advance in their music knowledge and a positive improvement in behavioral development, being able to perfectly manage the computer platform.     

多阶段均值–方差资产负债管理的随机控制

资产负债管理研究如何合理分配资产以到达最小化风险同时确保期望剩余财富(财富减去负债)达到一定水平.本文在均值–方差投资组合理论的框架下研究两类资产负债管理模型, 包括带有跨期均值–方差投资目标和带有非破产约束的模型. 由于在动态规划意义下, 方差不具有可分性质, 传统的随机最优控制方法难以直接应用. 如采用处理动态均值–方差优化问题的嵌入法来解决以上问题会带来计算上的困难. 本文借鉴平均场控制的思想对以上两类问题加以研究. 本文假设了非常宽泛的市场模型: 所有的资产都是风险资产; 债务和风险资产之间存在相关性. 在此市场假设模型下, 本文给出了最优投资策略(控制率)的解析表达式和均值–方差有效前沿的表达形式. 本研究成果为投资者提供了新的投资策略, 可应用于更复杂的资产负债管理中.     

基于策略的语义远程认证

远程认证在可信计算中起着重要作用,它能提供可信环境存在的可靠证据。目前的方法是测量目标平台的二进制码、配置文件、属性或者安全策略等可信值。所有这些认证方法是静态的,缺乏动态行为认证并且没有对于实际的行为进行说明和规范。为了改进和完善这些认证方式,提出了一种语义远程认证策略,并对其进行了定义、规范和证明。该策略是把使用控制模型和行为结合起来,能够动态测量远程平台的行为。     

Scene2Wav: a deep convolutional sequence-to-conditional SampleRNN for emotional scene musicalization

This paper presents Scene2Wav, a novel deep convolutional model proposed to handle the task of music generation from emotionally annotated video. This is important because when paired with the appropriate audio, the resulting music video is able to enhance the emotional effect it has on viewers. The challenge lies in transforming the video to audio domain and generating music. Our proposed encoder Scene2Wav uses a convolutional sequence encoder to embed dynamic emotional visual features from low-level features in the colour space, namely Hue, Saturation and Value. The decoder Scene2Wav is a proposed conditional SampleRNN which uses that emotional visual feature embedding as condition to generate novel emotional music. The entire model is fine-tuned in an end-to-end training fashion to generate a music signal evoking the intended emotional response from the listener. By taking into consideration the emotional and generative aspect of it, this work is a significant contribution to the field of Human-Computer Interaction. It is also a stepping stone towards the creation of an AI movie and/or drama director, which is able to automatically generate appropriate music for trailers and movies. Based on experimental results, this model can effectively generate music that is preferred to the user when compared to the baseline model and able to evoke correct emotions.

     

Letter to the Editor

This paper examines how an object called a decision support system (DSS) is a system from the point of view of GST (general systems theory) and how GST is related with the development of DSS in a positive way. Since a DSS is a complicated system, it cannot be described by one model. We will proceed the consideration in the following different levels: functional level, structural level, process level and physical level. We will show that on each level GST provides a useful framework to deal with a DSS and the general formulation by GST directs what is to be done in the development of DSS. On the progress of the development we have found GST can help us with conceptualizing a DSS which is most important in finding a correct research direction. The presented models are the basic framework of our current system, a product of GST.     

Commentary on 'the effect of graphic style on data model interpretation'

Abstract. In this issue, the paper by Nordbotten & Crosby, entitled 'The effect of graphic style on data model interpretation', attempts to establish a causal link between the graphic style of a conceptual data model (or data modelling language) and the success of users attempting to interpret instances of the use of that data model. It employs the novel technique of eye-movement tracking to determine what is viewed or seen by the interpreters (experimental subjects) as an intermediary construct in the interpretation, in that what is not seen cannot be interpreted. It then further attempts to measure the success of the experimental interpretations and supposes that differences between subjects' interpretations are caused by the differences in the graphic style of the various experimentally presented data models.     

Interactive story authoring: A viable form of creative expression for the classroom

The unprecedented growth in numbers of children playing computer games has stimulated discussion and research regarding what, if any, educational value these games have for teaching and learning. The research on this topic has primarily focused on children as players of computer games rather than builders/constructors of computer games. Recently, several game companies, such as BioWare Corp. and Bethesda Softworks, have released game story creation tools to the public, along with their games. However, a major obstacle to using these commercial tools is the level of programming experience required to create interactive game stories. In this paper, we demonstrate that a commercial game story construction tool, BioWare Corp.’s Aurora Toolset, can be augmented by our new tool, ScriptEase, to enable students in two grade ten English classes to successfully construct interactive game stories. We present evidence that describes the relationship between interactive story authoring and traditional story authoring, along with a series of factors that can potentially affect success at these activities: gender, creativity, intellectual ability, previous experiences with programming, time playing computer games, and time spent online. Results indicate that students can successfully construct sophisticated interactive stories with very little training. The results also show no gender differences in the quality of these interactive stories, regardless of programming experience or the amount of time per week playing computer games or participating in general online activities, although a subset of female students did show a slightly higher level of performance on interactive story authoring. In the educational context of this study, we show that ScriptEase provides an easy-to-use tool for interactive story authoring in a constructionist learning environment.     

面向中文歌词的音乐情感分类方法

情感是音乐最重要的语义信息,音乐情感分类广泛应用于音乐检索,音乐推荐和音乐治疗等领域.传统的音乐情感分类大都是基于音频的,但基于现在的技术水平,很难从音频中提取出语义相关的音频特征.歌词文本中蕴含着一些情感信息,结合歌词进行音乐情感分类可以进一步提高分类性能.本文将面向中文歌词进行研究,构建一部合理的音乐情感词典是歌词情感分析的前提和基础,因此基于Word2Vec构建音乐领域的中文情感词典,并基于情感词加权和词性进行中文音乐情感分析.本文首先以VA情感模型为基础构建情感词表,采用Word2Vec中词语相似度计算的思想扩展情感词表,构建中文音乐情感词典,词典中包含每个词的情感类别和情感权值.然后,依照该词典获取情感词权值,构建基于TF-IDF （Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency）和词性的歌词文本的特征向量,最终实现音乐情感分类.实验结果表明所构建的音乐情感词典更适用于音乐领域,同时在构造特征向量时考虑词性的影响也可以提高准确率.     

Toc‐Tum mini‐games: An educational game accessible for deaf culture based on virtual reality

Human hearing is an important sense, which complements the other senses, and is essential for children to begin to acquire basic concepts of the world; however, in severe cases of disability, children become marginalized from these benefits. An example of this is with music, a deaf individual is to be able to perceive it. With this in mind, we developed a novel medical expert system based on virtual reality, called Toc‐Tum mini‐games, applying basic concepts of music in an accessible way to the deaf culture. The intelligent proposed system is validated in two different tests: (a) with the target audience to evaluate the interest in the game and (b) with professionals knowledgeable in the field of music or who have had contact with the deaf, evaluate the impact of the game teaching music to the deaf. The tests with the target audience showed that the methods of interaction allowed the children to understand most of the stages and that they were animated during the test days. Regarding the professionals, they were interested in the possibility of using the proposed system in question, even if some modifications in the design had to be made. The results showed that the Toc‐Tum mini‐games is an intelligent tool capable of introducing music in a playful and manageable way using a virtual environment.