Mei Fang Liau Master Thesis Student Email:   ukelady(at)gmail.com

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I'm a master thesis student under supervision of Jonathan Diehl at the Media Computing Group at RWTH Aachen University.

Work

We want to design and evaluate a system that represents the semantic structure of the
song as how the composer thinks of it. Firstly, it allows prototyping of song
modifications by variations and propagating changes of individual segments throughout
the entire song. Secondly, it uses metaphors close to the human thinking of music.

As a first prototype, we have restricted our focus to rhythm composition on the pattern
level. To better present the concept of a loop, we utilize a circular layout for each
element of the music. Similar to the clock, time presented on the disk can be easily divided
into equal portions, and the continual nature of looping is also clearly shown. Multiple disks
represent different instruments. The user can specify the length of a loop by changing the
number of steps in each disk, which also changes its size. The user can also combine
disks into groups to compare them.

We also support creating variations of patterns. These variations keep visual reference to
their originals and treat changes as incremental, meaning that only changes are recorded.
This way, a change of the original propagates to all variations. Variations are stored
alongside the original allowing for easy switching between them in a later song
arrangement.

In a subsequent prototype, we want to create a complete composing environment, which
adds interface for managing the semantic context of a song and prototyping tools for
quick refinement. The interrelated materials from different sources are created in
segments, and then arranged in a timeline. Details are hidden by the user 's high-level
definition of each segment and retrieved in groups.

To sum up, the semantics of music reduces the effort of composing music. It
deconstructs the timeline and groups the content according to the relationships among
the elements. Making music in a semantic manner suggests a different workflow: the
user creates the base elements and uses them to create variations of the initial phrase,
which is analogous to how generally music evolves from the elemental units.

Software Prototype (internal only)