Understanding the Virtuoso: Exploring Music and Performance with Software

	AVATAR Lecture Series
	Understanding the Virtuoso: Exploring Music and Performance with Software
	Nicolas Gold, University College London
	Senior Lecturer, Department of Computer Science
	Johnston Hall 338 September 28, 2011 - 09:30 am
Abstract: The popularity of particular classical musicians stems partly from our preference (as listeners) for the way in which our favourite performers play. To some extent this is independent of the pieces of music we choose to listen to them play. But why is this the case? Attempting to understand a musician's style from their performances would require listening to and comparing their output with that of many others, something that may not be tractable in terms of an analyst's available time or their ability to remember or perceive distinguishing characteristics over such a large number of performances. In this talk I will present the methods and results of a recent project to tackle this problem in which we applied computational approaches to the analysis of recorded performance to find performance "motives" (unique recurring characteristics arising in the performances themselves). In addition, I will give a brief overview of other research activity in computer music at UCL. This includes clone detection for music programming languages, automated exploration of text-tune alignment for medieval music, automated support for synthesiser programming, and human-computer music performance systems.

Speaker's Bio: Nicolas Gold is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at University College London (UCL) and received his Ph.D. from the University of Durham, UK, in 2000. He undertakes research in music computing, software engineering and the digital humanities and has published widely in these areas. He is a member of the Centre for Research in Evolution, Search, and Testing (CREST), an affiliate member of the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, and an Associate of the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (CMPCP).

Refreshments will be served.

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