Technology Trends

Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) have designed an interface for non-musicians to play music. This interface, part of the Expression Synthesis Project (ESP), is based on the fact that more people know how to drive a car than an orchestra. In “Baby, you can drive my song,” the researchers explain how they converted real musical scores into digital virtual roads. Then using a steering wheel and foot pedals, you ‘drive’ on this road to interpret the piece of music, becoming a real maestro. Such a system should be demonstrated in a public exhibit by 2008 and become available to everyone in the same time frame. Read more…

Here are some details about the ESP project, devised by a team led by Elaine Chew of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

ESP “attempts to provide a driving interface for musical expression,” according to Chew’s published description. “The premise of ESP is that driving serves as an effective metaphor for expressive music performance. Not everyone can play an instrument but almost anyone can drive a car. By using a familiar interface, ESP aims to provide a compelling metaphor for expressive performance so as to make high-level expressive decisions accessible to non-experts.”

Created by Chew, Alexandre R.J. François, a research professor in the Viterbi School, and graduate students Jie Liu and Aaron Yang, ESP starts with a piece of music in the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) format, one that has been converted from the printed score.

Below is a diagram showing how the system works, from a real musical score to a virtual digital road, and then from this road to real music played by you (Credit: USC Viterbi School of Engineering).

This image comes from this document about the Expression Synthesis Project(PDF format, 2 pages, 658 KB).

Of course, the difficult part is to convert a real musical score into a digital road.

The group is building tools to automate the process of creating such roads, applying artificial intelligence techniques to the analysis of the score. “Having the road build itself will be the most difficult part,” says François.

The road’s turns suggest to the driver when to slow down and speed up. however, the ultimate decision on what to do at each turn is entirely in the driver’s hands (or foot). The foot pedals control both the tempo and the volume of the music. Additionally, buttons mounted on the wheel act as the equivalent of the pedals on the piano, making the notes either sustain or cut off crisply.

This research work was presented at the 2005 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), held on May 26-28 in Vancouver, Canada.

Here is a link to the paper which was presented at this conference, “ESP: A Driving Interface for Expression Synthesis” (PDF format, 4 pages, 289 KB).

You can also find more information about this project by visiting the Music Computation and Cognition website (but it appears that some links are broken right now) or the USC Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC).

Finally, on this poster about the project (PDF format, 1 page, 439 KB), you’ll read that the goal is to have an interactive public exhibit in 2008.

Ready to drive an orchestra?

Sources: USC Viterbi School of Engineering news release, May 30, 2005; and various websites

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Engineering
  
  
• Human Computer Interface
  
  
• Innovation
  
  
• Music
  

You probably don’t bother to convert an old cassette or a VHS tape to a CD or a DVD. Most of you just buy a new copy — at least if it’s available. But if you’re a museum, such as the Field Museum in Chicago, and that you own dozens of hours of invaluable information recorded more than 50 years ago, this is another story. You want to rescue these ‘endangered’ recordings. In order to give visitors some insights about over 6,000 artifacts of its permanent Pacific collection, the museum needed to read audio tapes named ’sonobands.’ Now, these voices which have been recorded on a state-of-the-art Walkie RecordAll system — in 1958 — have been saved to digital format with some creative engineering help. Read more…

Let’s first look at a picture of this Walkie RecordAll device, which dates from 1954.

Here is a link to a larger picture. And you also can see another image of the Walkie RecordAll device at the bottom of this page devoted to the history of sound recording technology.

Now, let’s go back to the Field Museum news release for an explanation of the problem it was facing.

In 1958, Field Museum curator of the Pacific, Roland Force, sat down with Captain A.W.F. Fuller to record more than 100 hours of comprehensive information about the 6,622 artifacts in Fuller’s Pacific collection that had been acquired over the previous half century. They used a Walkie RecordAll, then a state-of-the-art recording device, and write-able media tapes called sonobands. Today, the Museum is having these recordings converted to a digital format, which is proving to be quite a challenge.

Much as reel-to-reel tape recorders and eight-track cassettes have been relegated to the technological dustbin, the Walkie RecordAll and the sonoband medium on which the device etched sounds fell out of use in the 1970s. Today this technology is as imperiled as an endangered species, such as the panda or snow leopard. In fact, the full-service archival lab that the Museum contracted to preserve the recordings did not possess a machine of this type.

So what to do to save these ‘endangered’ recordings?

Fortunately, The Field Museum had kept the two Walkie RecordAll machines used for the Fuller-Force recording sessions. It has loaned these semi-functioning devices to the contractor, The Cutting Corporation (Macromedia Flash format), an audio production facility with a renowned sound preservation laboratory in Bethesda, Md., for this project. After studying and restoring the Museum’s Walkie RecordAll machines, The Cutting Corporation had to re-engineer its own Walkie RecordAll machine.

The sound preservation engineers at The Cutting Corporation have found that the most challenging part of preserving these recordings digitally is that the sonobands have become brittle over time. As a result, the grooves on the recordings have altered, making tracking difficult but achievable. Thus, through creative engineering, the voices describing the masks and skulls, weapons and tools, idols and boomerangs, will be saved.

Now, if you happen to visit the Field Museum, you’ll be able to see the entire Fuller’s Pacific permanent collection of artifacts and learn about them by listening to the restored voice of Captain A.W.F. Fuller.

Sources: The Field Museum, via EurekAlert!, May 3, 2005; and various websites

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Arts
  
  
• History
  
  
• Music
  
  
• Technology
  

You might consider this idea with enthusiasm or skepticism, but mobile TV might soon represent a much larger market for the cell phone industry than today’s ringtones or text messages. In “TV Phones Prep for Prime Time,” BusinessWeek says that according to In-Stat, revenues could grow from $32 million in 2004 to $1.9 billion in 2008. (I’m always amazed by analysts’ forecasts.) For example, a small Californian company, Sling Media, will launch its first product to deliver streaming video content to your handheld devices in just a few months. And wireless operators, phone makers and cable companies are all working on similar programs. Of course, they only plan to sell you short programs, such as news or music clips. Besides the facts that the screen of your phone is small and that you’ll need faster networks than today’s ones, would you subscribe to such a service? Read more…

As often, the BusinessWeek story starts with an anecdote before moving to the big picture.

Two years ago, Blake Krikorian had to travel on business just as his favorite baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, unexpectedly earned a place in the World Series for the first time in 13 years. Krikorian desperately wanted to watch the games but had few options. At the time, he wished he could watch it on his cell phone. But no such service was available.

Sensing a business opportunity, Krikorian began to investigate the concept, and in June of this year he launched Sling Media. The San Mateo (Calif.)-based company’s first product, due out in the first quarter of 2005, will stream video content to handheld devices.

The company found $10 million to start its business and enrolled companies such as Microsoft or Texas Instruments as partners. Does this mean there is a real market here?

Mobile TV is a promising frontier in the handheld industry. The ranks of subscribers could jump from 273,000 by yearend to 1.2 million in 2005, and revenues could grow from $32.8 million in 2004 to $47.5 million in 2005 — and $1.9 billion in 2008, figures Clint Wheelock, an analyst with tech consultancy In-Stat.

Eventually, mobile TV might far outshine the markets for popular wireless data services such as ringtones and short text messaging. An In-Stat survey of 1,009 people done in February showed that Americans are far more excited about mobile TV than about any other data application offered so far.

As I almost only watch TV to catch old movies, I’m not terribly excited by the idea of watching them on my cell phone. But this is not the future of mobile TV.

User surveys conducted by Digital Video Recorder (DVR) company TiVo indicate that Americans spend only two to five hours a week watching feature-length movies. The bulk of their 20-plus TV viewing hours each week goes to watching shorter programs, such as news footage or music videos.

Such clips might be perfect for viewing on a cell phone — say, while you’re stuck on a train on the way to work. Many industry watchers believe the handset will turn into the third TV screen in our lives, behind the home TV and the PC. “This is really a service with mass appeal,” Wheelock says.

BusinessWeek then looks at mobile TV future plans currently under development at wireless providers, phone makers and cable companies. And it writes that all these future providers of mobile TV contents are facing the same problem. Current networks are not fast enough.

For now, though, perfect-picture quality requires a wireless connection with speed of at least 100 kilobits per second. So, streaming devices may be confined to areas equipped with wireless high-speed Internet access technology called Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity), such as Starbucks outlets.

Of course, wireless networks have a long way to go in terms of quality and speed before such services will be able to take on the TV. Cell phones’ memory would have to grow dramatically, and their battery life would need to make a major leap. Still, mobile TV could be the new horizon in wireless handhelds.

Will I ever watch TV news in the Paris subway? I have some doubts. And you, what do you think of the idea of watching TV on your cell phone? Please post your comments below.

Source: Olga Kharif, BusinessWeek Online, Decmber 1, 2004

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Handhelds
  
  
• Market
  
  
• Music
  
  
• Wireless