From: Dr. Dobb's Report <ddj@newsletters.sdmediagroup.com>
Date: Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 12:11 PM
Subject: Dr. Dobb's Report - 11/12/08 - Music and Math: A Hard Day's Follow-Up

Editor's Note

Music and Math: A Hard Day's Follow-Up

Music and mathematics. I'm enamored by both, but skilled in neither.
When it comes down to it, all I really want to do is write--and
sing--songs like Antsy McClain of the Trailer Park Troubadours, and be
able to balance my checkbook. That's not too much to ask, is it?

Luckily, technology again comes to the rescue, thanks to Elaine Chew
and Ching-Hua Chua, who specialize in the intersection of music and
mathematics. The duo have come up with the concept of Automatic
Style-Specific Accompaniment, which aims to assist music lovers in
writing a complete song with sophisticated chord progressions. They do
so by taking melody as input, and harmonizing it with style-specific
accompaniments. In their hybrid system, statistical learning (such as
Support Vector Machine) maintains the style by learning from only a
few pieces from users' favorite bands/song writers, while music
knowledge (such as Neo-Riemannian Transform) ensures the generated
chords are resolved musically correctly.

As this isn't assistance enough for the music-and-math impaired like
me, Georgia Tech has launched its Center for Music Technology whose
goal is to provide a collaborative framework for people to apply their
musical, technological, and scientific creativity to the development
of innovative artistic and technological artifacts. Again, all I want
to do is sing and strum like Antsy McClain. That said, one of the
projects the Center has released is ZooZBeat, a gesture-based handheld
musical "studio" that's simple enough for non-musicians (like me?) to
become musically expressive, but rich enough for experienced musicians
to push the envelope of mobile music creation. Start playing with just
a click, they say, or select among background beats in a variety of
styles. Use shake and tilt movements, tap the screen, or press the
keypads to create and modify rhythmic and melodic lines. Sounds right
up my alley.

Finally, in response to "Hard Day's Math," which prompted this thread,
reader Ken Graham was kind enough to share the following tidbit about
what I hope is the true story of the opening chord to a "Hard Day's
Night":

Actually, in a story attributed to an interview with Joe Walsh, the
first time Joe met George Harrison he played the first few bars of
"Hard Day's Night." George asked Joe how he learned to play that
beginning so well. Joe said that it took a lot of practice and
improvising a non-standard fingering for one of the guitar chords. To
which George was reported to have said, "That's amazing, because we
cheated. We restrung two of my 12 string guitars and Paul played the
top 6 strings on one guitar and I played the bottom 6 strings on the
other."

Thanks Ken.

-- Jonathan Erickson
jerickson@ddj.com

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