School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science

[SAMI 2] Enhancing the music listening experience

Supervisor: Prof Mark Sandler

Research group(s): Centre for Digital Music

In the near future, music formats that allow the listener to build his/her own individual mix from separate instrument tracks will be readily available. Already there is an MPEG standard file format (Interactive Music Application Format - IMAF) that supports this. This project will investigate several of the following ways for listeners to interact with the music and participate more deeply in the listening experience: i) appropriate balance between different instrument stems depending on the acoustic context (e.g. busy subway vs. quiet sitting room); ii) navigation within music pieces according to the musical structure (e.g. skip to chorus, repeat verse without guitar); iii) other active-listener oriented applications, such as intelligent karaoke. Students will need good familiarity with Signal Processing, with User Interaction (or be willing to learn quickly), and with coding in an appropriate programming language. They will work with some MPEG standards, particularly IMAF.