The So Strangely Podcast

Music technology PhD Candidate Tim de Reuse recommends “Unmixer: An Interface for Extracting and Remixing Loops” by Jordan Smith,Yuta Kawasaki, and Masataka Goto, published in the proceedings of ISMIR 2019. Tim and Finn interview Jordan about the origins of this project, the algorithm behind the loop extraction, the importance of repetition in music, and the creative and playful applications of Unmixer. Note: This conversation was recorded in December 2019. Techically issues with some tracks contributed to delays. Apologies for the choppy audio quality. Time Stamps [0:01:40] Project Summary [0:05:05] Demonstration of Unmixer [0:14:27] Origins of the UnMixer project  [0:19:44] Factorisation algorithm  [0:28:37] Computational and musical objectives for factorisation [0:36:15] The Unmixer web interface [0:41:30] 2nd Demonstration, parameters and track selection [0:49:13] What Unmixer tells us about music Show notes Recommended article: Smith, J, Kawasaki, Y, & Goto, M. (2019) Unmixer: An Interface for Extracting and Remixing Loops. Proceedings of  20th ISMIR meeting, Delft Netherlands. UnMixer website: https://unmixer.ongaaccel.jp/ Project webpage Interviewee: Dr. Jordan BL Smith, Research Scientist at Tik Tok.Website, twitter Co-host: PhD Candidate Tim de Reuse, website, twitter Papers cited in the discussion: Smith, J. B., & Goto, M. (2018, April). Nonnegative tensor factorization for source separation of loops in audio. In 2018 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) (pp. 171-175). IEEE. Schmidhuber, J. (2009). Simple algorithmic theory of subjective beauty, novelty, surprise, interestingness, attention, curiosity, creativity, art, science, music, jokes. Journal of SICE, 48(1). Rafii, Z., & Pardo, B. (2012). Repeating pattern extraction technique (REPET): A simple method for music/voice separation. IEEE transactions on audio, speech, and language processing, 21(1), 73-84. Music sampled: Daft Punk, Random Access Memories (2013): Doing it Right (ft. Panda Bear) Martin Solveig & Dragonette, Smash (2011): Hello – Single Edit Mura Masa, Soundtrack To a Death (2014): I’ve Never Felt So Good Other references: Madeon’s Adventure Machine Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday Credits The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2020. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.

In western classical music, theorists have long argued (and mostly agreed) that individual notes of the major and minor scale have sensations associated, feelings often described in terms of tension, motion, sadness, and stability. Dr Baker recommends Prof. Clair Arthur’s paper “A perceptual study of scale-degree qualia in context” from Music Perception (2018) which describes testing these associations through the subjective reports of musicians and non-musicians when presented scale degrees in different harmonic contexts. Together we discuss the challenges of the probe tone paradigm, interactions of musicianship training and perception of tonality, and ambiguity in note qualia perception. Time Stamps [0:00:10] Introductions [0:02:40] Summary of Paper [0:09:50] Origins and Experiment 1 – free association [0:16:57] Experiment 2 – probe tone ratings [0:23:25] Results and surprises [0:28:59] Inconsistency in qualia reports [0:34:20] Stimulus examples and experiment limitations [0:41:21] Implications of findings [0:50:43] Using Musically trained participants [0:53:51] Closing summary Show notes Recommended article: Arthur, C. (2018). A perceptual study of scale-degree qualia in context. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 35(3), 295-314 Interviewee: Prof. Claire Arthur of Georgia Tech University  Co-host: Dr. David Baker, Lead Instructor of Data Science at the Flatiron School  David Huron’s Sweet Anticipation, 2006 from MIT Press Credits The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2020. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.

This episode brings recommendations from the 2019 ISMIR conference at TUDelft in the Netherlands. A number of contributors, old and new, highlighted papers that had caught their attention.  Note: At ISMIR, all accepted papers were presented via a short 4 minute talk and a poster. This arrangement made it possible to keep all presentations in a single track. All papers and permited talks are posted on the ISMIR site. Time Stamps [0:01:51] Matan’s rec [0:07:27] Rachel’s rec [0:10:51] Andrew’s rec [0:15:20] Ashley and Felicia’s rec [0:19:59] Néstor’s rec [0:26:55] Tejaswinee’s rec [0:31:13] Brian’s rec [0:36:06] Finn’s recs Show notes Matan Gover recommends [A13] Conditioned-U-Net: Introducing a Control Mechanism in the U-Net for Multiple Source Separations by Gabriel Meseguer Brocal and Geoffroy Peeters (paper, presentation) Andrew Demetriou recommends [F10] Tunes Together: Perception and Experience of Collaborative Playlists by So Yeon Park; Audrey Laplante; Jin Ha Lee; Blair Kaneshiro (paper, presentation) Tejaswinee Kelkar recommends [B03] Estimating Unobserved Audio Features for Target-Based Orchestration by Jon Gillick; Carmine-Emanuele Cella; David Bamman (paper, presentation) Ashley Burgoyne and Felicia Villalobos recommend [E13] SAMBASET: A Dataset of Historical Samba de Enredo Recordings for Computational Music Analysis by Lucas Maia; Magdalena Fuentes; Luiz Biscainho; Martín Rocamora; Slim Essid (paper, presentation) Néstor Nápoles López recommends the anniversary paper [E-00] 20 Years of Automatic Chord Recognition from Audio by Johan Pauwels; Ken O’Hanlon; Emilia Gomez; Mark B. Sandler (paper, presentation) Rachel Bittner recommends [A06] Cover Detection with Dominant Melody Embeddings by Guillaume Doras; Geoffroy Peeters (paper, presentation) Brian McFee recommends [E-06] FMP Notebooks: Educational Material for Teaching and Learning Fundamentals of Music Processing by Meinard Müller; Frank Zalkow (paper, presentation, webpage) And Finn’s rec: [D-12] AIST Dance Video Database: Multi-Genre, Multi-Dancer, and Multi-Camera Database for Dance Information Processing  By Shuhei Tsuchida; Satoru Fukayama; Masahiro Hamasaki; Masataka Goto. (Paper, presentation) Keynotes: Henkjan Honing’s What makes us musical animals and Georgina Born’s MIR redux: Knowledge and realworld challenges, and new interdisciplinary futures [F-14] The ISMIR Explorer – A Visual Interface for Exploring 20 Years of ISMIR Publications by Thomas Low; Christian Hentschel; Sayantan Polley; Anustup Das; Harald Sack; Andreas Nurnberger; Sebastian Stober (paper, presentation, website) Credits The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2019. Algorithmic music samples from the blog post Music Transformer: Generating Music with Long-Term Structure, and included under the principles of fair dealing. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.

Finn interviews Composer and Machine Learning specialist Dr. Cheng-Zhi Anna Huang about the Music Transformer project at Google’s Magenta Labs. They discuss representations of music for machine learning, algorithmic music generation as a compositional aid, the JS Bach Google Doodle, how self-reference defines structure in music, and compare the musicality of different systems with example outputs. Time Stamps [0:01:05] Introducing Dr. Anna Huang [0:03:43] JS Bach Google Doodle [0:12:52] Representations of musical information for machine learning [0:16:26] Music Transformer project [0:25:15] RNN algorithm music sample [0:25:45] ABA structure challenge for generative systems [0:30:30] Vanilla Transformer algorithm music sample  [0:32:07] Music Transformer algorithm music sample  [0:36:30] Self Reference Visualisation (see blog post) [0:43:27] Everyday music implications [0:48:10] What this work says about music [0:50:01] Music Transformer trained on Jazz Piano  Show notes Recommended project: Blog post: Huang, C.Z.A., Simon, I., & Dinculescu, M. (2018, Dec 12). Music Transformer: Generating Music with Long-Term Structure [Blog Post] Paper: Huang, C.Z.A., Vaswani, A., Uszkoreit, J., Shazeer, N., Simon, I., Hawthorne, C., Dai, A.M., Hoffman, M.D., Dinculescu, M., & Eck, D. (2018) MUSIC TRANSFORMER: GENERATING MUSIC WITH LONG-TERM STRUCTURE on arXiv.org Interviewee:  Dr. Cheng-Zhi Huang at Google AI, on twitter @huangcza Google Doodle Celebrating JS Bach with AI harmonising melodies Related papers: Huang, C.Z.A., Cooijmans, T., Roberts, A., Courville, A., Eck, D. (2017). Coconet: Counterpoint by Convolution. ISMIR. Huang, C.Z.A., Cooijmans, T., Dinculescu, M., Roberts, A., & Hawthorne, C. (2019, Mar 20). Coconet: the ML model behind today’s Bach Doodle. Huang, C.Z.A., Hawthorne, C., Roberts, A., Dinculescu, M., Wexler, J., Hong, L., Howcroft, J. (2019). The Bach Doodle: Approachable music composition with machine learning at scale. ISMIR. Credits The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2018. Algorithmic music samples from the blog post Music Transformer: Generating Music with Long-Term Structure, and included under the principles of fair dealing. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.

Music Education doctoral candidate Ethan Hein recommends “Equity and Music Education: Euphemisms, Terminal Naivety, and Whiteness” by Juliet Hess, published in Action, Criticism & Theory for Music Education, 2017. Ethan and Finn interview Dr. Juliet Hess about this study and whiteness in music education, and addressing systemic racism from within our areas of academia. Time Stamps [0:00:10] Intro with Ethan Hein [0:08:29] Interview: Dr. Juliet Hess, Background and Case Studies [0:18:50] Interview: Multiculturalism and Music [0:29:31] Interview: Whiteness in the Conservatory [0:36:19] Interview: Context and Implications [0:44:06] Interview: Future work [0:51:50] Closing with Ethan Hein Show notes Recommended article: Hess, J. (2017). Equity and Music Education: Euphemisms, Terminal Naivety, and Whiteness. Action, Criticism & Theory for Music Education, 16(3). (HTML, PDF) Interviewee: Dr. Juliet Hess, Assistant Professor of Music Education at Michigan State University  Co-host: Ethan Hein, Doctoral Candidate in Music Education at New York University (website, twitter) Sources cited in the discussion: Kendrick Lamar’s Alright (youtube) Chris Thile’s performance on Prairie Home companion is no longer available Emma Stevens – Blackbird by The Beatles sung in Mi’kmaq (youtube) Correction: this performance is from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, not Newfoundland where there has been controversy around seal hunting. Both provinces are within the ancestral territory of Mi’kmaq People. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2006. Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. 2nd edition. Toronto, ON: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (Publisher page) Juliet Hess (2018) Interrupting the symphony: unpacking the importance placed on classical concert experiences, Music Education Research, 20:1, 11-21, DOI: 10.1080/14613808.2016.1202224 (HTML) Juliet Hess’ new book:  Hess, Juliet. (2019) Music Education for Social Change: Constructing an Activist Music Education,  Routledge (Publisher page) Credits The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2019. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.

Host Finn Upham recommends “How Music Moves Us: Entraining to Musicians’ Movements” by Alexander Demos and Roger Chaffin, published in Music Perception, 2017. They interview Dr Demos about this study and adjacent issues. Note: This interview goes fairly deep into the challenges of time series data analysis. Feel free to use the time stamps listed in the show notes to skip ahead if this is not your cup of tea. Time Stamps [0:00:10] Intro to article and Alex [0:03:20] Design of Air Conducting experiment [0:11:15] Capturing movements of performers and listeners [0:15:40] Assessing alignment between motion time series [0:25:26] Non-linearity in these time series [0:31:18] False negatives and intermittent alignment [0:38:32] Theories of Music and Ancillary motion [0:45:04] Closing Summary and Implications   Show notes Recommended article: Demos, A. P., & Chaffin, R. (2018). How Music Moves Us: Entraining to Musicians’ Movements. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 35(4), 405-424.  (pdf) Interviewee: Dr. Alexander Demos, Clinical assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago (website) Some publications cited in the discussion: Schreiber, T., & Schmitz, A. (1996). Improved surrogate data for nonlinearity tests. Physical Review Letters, 77(4), 635–638. Cook, N. (2013). Beyond the score: Music as performance. Oxford University Press. Theiler, J., Eubank, S., Longtin, A., Galdrikian, B. & Farmer, J. D. (1992). Testing for nonlinearity in time series: The method of surrogate data. Physica D, 58, 77–94. Dean, R. T., Bailes, F., & Dunsmuir, W. T. (2014). Time series analysis of real-time music perception: Approaches to the assessment of individual and expertise differences in perception of expressed affect. Journal of Mathematics and Music, 8(3), 183-205. Wanderley, M. M., Vines, B. W., Middleton, N., Mckay, C., & Hatch, W. (2005). The musical significance of clarinetists’ ancillary gestures: An exploration of the field. Journal of New Music Research, 34(1), 97–113. DOI: 10.1080/092982105 00124208 Credits The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2019. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.

Postdoctoral fellow Sarah Sauvé recommends “Individual differences in rhythmic cortical entrainment correlate with predictive behavior in sensorimotor synchronization” by Sylvie Nozaradan, Isabelle Peret, and Peter E. Keller, published in Nature Scientific Reports in 2016. Sarah and Finn interview Dr. Nozaradan about the measures of metrical perception and rhythm production, entrainment to difficult stimuli, and what these results imply for a replication study conducted with older participants. Time Stamps [0:00:10] Intro with Sarah [0:09:41] Interview: Where this study comes from [0:14:25] Interview: Challenging stimuli [0:22:09] Interview: Older listeners replication [0:26:43] Interview: Task 3, metrical prediction [0:38:25] Interview: Implications for everyday musical experiences [0:44:43] Closing debrief Show notes Recommended article: Nozaradan, S., Peretz, I., & Keller, P. E. (2016). Individual differences in rhythmic cortical entrainment correlate with predictive behavior in sensorimotor synchronization. Scientific reports, 6, 20612. Interviewee: Dr. Sylvie Nozaradan, Institute of neuroscience at UC Louvain, in Belgium (Google Scholar Profile) Co-host: Dr. Sarah Sauvé, Postdoctoral fellow at Memorial University of Newfoundland (Website, twitter) Contact Questions, comments, and article recommendations are always welcome! Get in touch here, through the contact page, or on twitter, or email the producer directly: finn at sostrangely.com Credits The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2019. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.

Four Music Science attendees of the 2018 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience join Finn to discuss their experience of the conference, their own projects, and other interesting research presented. PhD Candidates Avital Sternin, Andrew Chang, Dr. Keith Doelling, and Prof. Amy Belfi get into the neural processing of song, emotion and alzheimer’s, leadership in small ensembles, onset prediction in the auditory cortex and more. Get an inside view of how Music Science fits into the biggest Neuroscience conference according to the young scientists on the ground. Time Stamps [0:01:06] Introduction of panelists [0:03:12] Introduction of Society for Neuroscience Conference [0:07:11] Music Science at SfN and in Neuroscience [0:10:48] Avital’s project (introduced by Amy) [0:21:50] Andrew’s project (introduced by Keith) [0:33:18] Amy’s project (introduced by Avital) [0:44:04] Keith’s project (introduced by Andrew) Show notes SfN18 website and program Avital Sternin, PhD Candidate at The Brain and Mind Institute of The University of Western Ontario   Abstract, Poster for Identifying the neural correlates of Music Familiarity using a strict training paradigm by A. Sternin, A. M. Owen, J. A. Grahn. Andrew Chang, Ph.D. Candidate in Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University Abstract, Poster  for Neural oscillatory mechanisms for interpersonal entrainment in music ensembles by A. Chang, P. Chrapka, D. Bosnyak, L. J. Trainor. Associated paper: A. Chang, S.R. Livingstone, D. Bosnyak, and L. J. Trainor. Body sway reflects leadership in joint music performance. PNAS May 23, 2017 114 (21) E4134-E4141 Prof. Amy Belfi, Department of Psychological Science at Missouri University of Science and Technology Abstract, Poster  for Music and emotion in Alzheimer’s disease by A. M. Belfi, A. Resche-Hernandez, E. Guzman-Velez, D. Tranel. Dr. Keith Doelling, Dept. of Psychology, Centre for Neural Science, New York University Abstract, Poster  for Assessing evoked and oscillatory components in cortical synchronization to music using computational models by K. Doelling, M.F. Assaneo, J. Rowland, D. Bevilacqua, B. Pesaran, D. Poeppel. Associated paper: K. B. Doelling and D. Poeppel. Cortical entrainment to music and its modulation by expertise. PNAS November 10, 2015 112 (45) E6233-E6242 Other SfN 2018 posters mentioned Beat perception ability and familiarity with music alter gait in older adults during auditory cueing E. A. READY, J. D. HOLMES, J. S. GRAHN (and poster) Finding the beat: A neuro-mechanistic model for rhythmic beat generation Á. BYRNE, A. BOSE, J. M. RINZEL   Predictability and uncertainty in the pleasure of music B. P. GOLD, M. T. PEARCE, E. MAS-HERRERO, A. DAGHER, R. ZATORRE Distinct neural selectivities for music, speech, and song in human auditory cortex S. V. NORMAN-HAIGNERE, J. J. FEATHER, P. BRUNNER, A. RITACCIO, J. H. MCDERMOTT, G. SCHALK, N. G. KANWISHER (and associated paper, pdf) Spontaneous speech synchronization predicts neurophysiology, brain anatomy and language learning M. F. ASSANEO, P. RIPOLLES, J. ORPELLA, R. DE DIEGO-BALAGUER, D. POEPPEL Video of Dialogues Between Neuroscience and Society: Music and the Brain, with Pat Metheny Credits The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2018. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.

Music tech and data science professor Brian McFee recommends Vocals in Music Matter: The Relevance of Vocals in the Minds of Listeners by Andrew Demetriou, Andreas Jansson, Aparna Kumar, and Rachel M. Bittner, published in the 2018 ISMIR proceedings. Brian and Finn interview Andrew Demetriou about this research combining descriptions of music on Spotify and survey responses on what users pay attention to, like, and dislike in music generally and vocals specifically. Time Stamps [0:00:00] Introduction with Brian [0:10:05] Interview: Introduction: Origins of paper and Survey 1 analysis [0:20:15] Interview: Results of survey 1 and ethical research practices at Spotify [0:27:03] Interview: Second Survey construction, analysis, and results [0:34:37] Interview: Problems of terminology and labeling [0:43:27] Interview: Overall results and absence of vocals terms in music descriptions [0:53:30] Interview: Implications for everyday music listening [0:58:40] Closing with Brian (12/10 for efficient summary) Show notes Recommended article: Demetriou, A., Jansson, A., Kumar, A., & Bittner, R. M. Vocals in Music Matter: The Relevance of Vocals in the Minds of Listeners. Proceedings of ISMIR 2018 (pp. 514-520). Slide deck from the corresponding ISMIR talk that caught Brian’s attention Interviewee: Andrew Demetriou Co-host: Prof. Brian McFee And here is the action shot of the research team card sorting participants’ text responses to Survey 1. Spotify researchers (left to right) Rachel Bittner, Andreas Jansson, Andrew Demetriou, and Aparna Kumar working through the text responses to Survey 1. Credits The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2018. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.

Music Theorist Daniel Shanahan recommends “Indifference to dissonance in native Amazonians reveals cultural variation in music perception” by Josh H. McDermott, Alan F. Schultz, Eduardo A. Undurraga, and Ricardo A. Godoy, published in Nature Letters in 2016. Dan and Finn interview Josh about the musical culture of the Tsimane people, adapting music cognition experiments for cross-cultural studies, and what the absence of preference for consonant intervals (over dissonant intervals) in the people of one culture means for theories of music cognition more broadly. Time Stamps [0:00:00] Introduction with Dan [0:13:16] Interview with Josh and introduction to the Tsimane and their music culture [0:22:41] Experiment Design on Preference for Consonance and Dissonance [0:28:04] Experiment results and the distinction between melodic and harmonic intervals [0:32:53] Cross-culture study methodologies and follow up studies [0:38:39] Implications of results on experiences of western music listeners [0:42:04] Relationship of these results to other studies of preference for consonance [0:48:16] Closing with Dan   Show notes Recommended article: McDermott, J. H., Schultz, A. F., Undurraga, E. A., & Godoy, R. A. (2016). Indifference to dissonance in native Amazonians reveals cultural variation in music perception. Nature, 535(7613), 547. Interviewee: Prof. Josh McDermott, Associate Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Co-host: Prof. Dan Shanahan, Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Cognition at Ohio State University Works cited in the discussion: Trainor, L. J., Tsang, C. D., & Cheung, V. H. (2002). Preference for sensory consonance in 2-and 4-month-old infants. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 20(2), 187-194. Chiandetti, C., & Vallortigara, G. (2011). Chicks like consonant music. Psychological science, 22(10), 1270-1273. McDermott, J., & Hauser, M. (2004). Are consonant intervals music to their ears? Spontaneous acoustic preferences in a nonhuman primate. Cognition, 94(2), B11-B21. Polak, R., London, J., & Jacoby, N. (2016). Both isochronous and non-isochronous metrical subdivision afford precise and stable ensemble entrainment: a corpus study of malian jembe drumming. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 10, 285. Jacoby, N., & McDermott, J. H. (2017). Integer ratio priors on musical rhythm revealed cross-culturally by iterated reproduction. Current Biology, 27(3), 359-370.   Credits The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2018. Audio samples of Tsimane singing and experiment stimuli are taken form the Supplementary materials (samples 3, 4, 8, and 1) to the recommended article. Included with permission from Prof. McDermott. The closing music includes a sample of Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion Sound Demo 1.