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Two of Bocko's doctoral students, Xiaoxiao Dong and Mark Sterling, worked with Bocko to measure every aspect of a clarinet that affects its sound—from the backp

by pc 19y ago

Two of Bocko's doctoral students, Xiaoxiao Dong and Mark Sterling, worked with Bocko to measure every aspect of a clarinet that affects its sound—from the backpressure in the mouthpiece for every different fingering, to the way sound radiates from the instrument. They then built a computer model of the clarinet, and the result is a virtual instrument built entirely from the real-world acoustical measurements. It's really just MIDI with more variables.

sah 19y ago
Exactly. Don't look for this to reduce the size of your music collection until we can reverse-engineer physical models of entire bands and recording studios from the sounds they make.
- Hexstream 19y ago
  Well, there was a submitted story some time ago that showed new technology that can recognize the individual notes of instruments (at some degree of accuracy) and they could then make adjustments... So, it doesn't sound completely impossible.
  - aston 19y ago
    Still haven't seen that software in action. I'm more than a bit skeptical that it can do what it claims in the general case.
ovi256 19y ago
I wonder how many variables it would need to capture differences in human performance. Will it faithfully capture the differences between two world-class players? Glenn Gould and Evgeny Kissin? How? If it manages to do that, it may incidentally help us understand feelings, or personality. The captured data could be mined to search for the pattern of joy or sadness, for example. Furthermore, given enough data, software could synthethize new pieces. Kissin never blayed Bartok? No problem, just ask the software to 'play' Bartok in his style.
marvin 19y ago
..so in other words, the real implications of this isn't in music compression, it's in simulation/synthesis of musical instruments. This is an exciting field to be sure, with enough unsolved mysteries for anyone. I am still hungering for the abolishment of the guitar amplifier. Actually, there's this interesting software package written in Common LISP quite recently for performing versatile (audio) signal synthesis/simulation using different physical or abstract models. I haven't had a chance to look at it (and, come to think of it, I probably suck enough in LISP to turn it into a real chore), but it's at http://www.acoustics.hut.fi/software/BlockCompiler/ http://www.acoustics.hut.fi/software/BlockCompiler/ if anyone is interested.

by pc 19y ago

sah 19y ago

Exactly. Don't look for this to reduce the size of your music collection until we can reverse-engineer physical models of entire bands and recording studios from the sounds they make.

Hexstream 19y ago
Well, there was a submitted story some time ago that showed new technology that can recognize the individual notes of instruments (at some degree of accuracy) and they could then make adjustments... So, it doesn't sound completely impossible.
- aston 19y ago
  Still haven't seen that software in action. I'm more than a bit skeptical that it can do what it claims in the general case.

ovi256 19y ago

I wonder how many variables it would need to capture differences in human performance. Will it faithfully capture the differences between two world-class players? Glenn Gould and Evgeny Kissin? How? If it manages to do that, it may incidentally help us understand feelings, or personality. The captured data could be mined to search for the pattern of joy or sadness, for example. Furthermore, given enough data, software could synthethize new pieces. Kissin never blayed Bartok? No problem, just ask the software to 'play' Bartok in his style.

marvin 19y ago

..so in other words, the real implications of this isn't in music compression, it's in simulation/synthesis of musical instruments. This is an exciting field to be sure, with enough unsolved mysteries for anyone. I am still hungering for the abolishment of the guitar amplifier. Actually, there's this interesting software package written in Common LISP quite recently for performing versatile (audio) signal synthesis/simulation using different physical or abstract models. I haven't had a chance to look at it (and, come to think of it, I probably suck enough in LISP to turn it into a real chore), but it's at http://www.acoustics.hut.fi/software/BlockCompiler/ http://www.acoustics.hut.fi/software/BlockCompiler/ if anyone is interested.