Posts

Researchers from AIST have released an open database of dance videos, and I got very excited to try out some visualization methods on some of the files. This was also a good chance to test out some new functionality in the Musical Gestures Toolbox for Matlab that we are developing at RITMO. The AIST collection contains a number of videos. I selected one hip-hop dance video based on a very steady rhythmic pattern, and a contemporary dance video that is more fluid in both motion and music....

We just started a new run of our free online course Music Moves. Here we have a tradition of recording wrap-up videos every Friday, in which some of the course educators answer questions from the learners. We have recorded these in many different ways, from using high-end cameras and microphones to just using a handheld phone. We have found that using multiple cameras and microphones is too time-consuming, both in setup and editing....

I came across a high-speed recording of bowing on a violin string today, and thought it would be interesting to try to analyze it with the new version of the Musical Gestures Toolbox for Python. This is inspired by results from the creation of motiongrams of a high-speed guitar recording that I did some years ago. Here is the original video: From this I generated the following motion video: And from this we get the following motiongram showing the vertical motion of the string (time running from left to right):...

I was in Tromsø to hold a keynote lecture at the Munin conference a month ago, and was asked to contribute to a podcast they are running called Open Science Talk. Now it is out, and I am happy to share: Open Science Talk · #26 Music Research In this episode, we talk about Music Research, and how it is to practice open research within this field. Our guest is Alexander Jensenius, Associate Professor at the Department of Musicology Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion (IMV) at the University of Oslo....

How does an “old-school” document camera work for modern-day teaching? Remarkably well, I think. Here are some thoughts on my experience over the last few years. The reason I got started with a document camera was because I felt the need for a more flexible setup for my classroom teaching. Conference presentations with limited time are better done with linear presentation tools, I think, since the slides help with the flow....

How do you create full-screen images from each of the slides of a Google Docs presentation without too much manual work? For the previous blog post on my Munin keynote, I wanted to include some pictures from my 90-slide presentation. There is probably a point and click solution to this problem, but it is even more fun to use some command line tools to help out. These commands have been tested on Ubuntu 19....

Yesterday I gave a keynote lecture at the Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing in Tromsø. This is an annual conference that gathers librarians, research administrators and publishers, but also some researchers and students. It is my first time to the conference, and found it to be a very diverse, interesting and welcoming group of people. Abstract Is it possible to do experimental music research completely openly? And what can we gain by opening up the research process from beginning to end?...

I have been teaching the course Research Methods, Tools and Issues in our MCT programme this semester. The last class was an “open clinic” in which I answered questions about academic writing. Here is a summary of some of the things I answered, which may hopefully also be useful for others. Formatting Your academic exam paper is not the place to experiment with fancy layout and formatting. Some basic tips:...

We have a bunch of Canon XF105 at RITMO, a camera that records MXF files. This is not a particularly useful file format (unless for further processing). Since many of our recordings are just for documentation purposes, we often see the need to convert to MP4. Here I present two solutions for converting MXF files to MP4, both as individual files and a combined file from a folder. These are shell scripts based on the handy FFmpeg....

Earlier this year we were in Tampere with the self-playing guitars, and performed at the Tampere Conservatory. Here is a small video documentary made of the performance and with video interviews of the RITMO people involved. And here is a recording of only the performance.