OMRAS2: A Distributed Research Environment for Music Informatics and Computational Musicology

Online Music Recognition and Searching IIImagine you have just bought a new iPod, you rip loads of your dad's CDs into it (his music's cool) as well as your own, and pretty soon you have 10,000 tracks and the iPod is full. Now there's a problem. You've never listened to your dad's CDs (not that many of them anyway) and you're really not sure what The Human League sounds like, and there's another 500 CDs of his music in there. Where are the good songs? Howcan you ever build those really cool playlists to impress your friends with your vast musical knowledge?The problem is similar for a professional violinist doing research into different performances of Vivaldi's Four Seasons to find a new twist for an expectant audience, or the record producer trying to find a mathematical formula for number one singles (yes, they really do this).The answer to these and other interesting problems concerning large collections of digital music are exactly what the OMRAS2 project will address. The project can't itself give you neat software to run withiTunes and your iPod, but by the time you're at university, after the project finishes, you'll be able to get software that helps you build playlists with songs that you'll love even though you never heard thembefore; and there will be tools to help the violinist and record producer achieve their goals. Using tools from OMRAS2, your iPod will have its own super-DJ who knows your musical tastes, and record companies will use super-Producers that predict the best sounds to use for the next chart topping Number 1. If you actually study Music at university, you'll probably use OMRAS2 to help with your studies.OMRAS2 aims to help technology researchers build and investigate the software that is needed to construct these super-tools. But that's not all. It will also help music researchers investigate interesting aspects of music, such as what variations of that riff in Purple Haze did Jimi Hendrix play and how did they differ, and how did different pianists interpret Bach's Goldberg Variations. OMRAS2 will also look deeply at how music and information about music (like CD insert booklets, but more and on-line) will be enjoyed at home, not just downloading, but also searching, recommending, browsing and so on. And it won't be hard to use: OMRAS2 will use interfaces that look and react like the music editors you are used to from your Music Technology studies, like Adobe Audition, and the music players you use at home like RealAudio player.