requiem.net.au - ph.d.

Moved to Montreal

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:32:44 +1000

Many interesting things have happened in my life over the last 2 years. Most of these events aren't reflected here at requiem as I've let this site languish. This post is aimed at filling in the gaps.

Around 2 years ago, while still completing my PhD in Computer Science, I moved to Sydney to take up a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Psychology, Macquarie University. There I worked closely with Professor Bill Thompson to help establish the Music, Sound and Performance lab. While there I worked on music cognition and emotion, amusia (tone deafness), and motion capture and analysis of music performance. I enjoyed my time at the lab a great deal, and learnt a tremendous amount.

In May of 2008 I travelled to Germany to present our motion capture work at a workshop on music and synchronisation. I had a marvellous time, and met some great people along the way.

In September 2008 I was officially awarded my PhD, and I became Dr Livingstone. Shortly after this, my position at Macquarie drew to a close.

In October 2008 I moved Montreal, Canada, to take up a position as a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Psychology at McGill University. Here I'm working at the Sequence Production Lab on motion capture with Canada Research Chair and professor Caroline Palmer.

Montreal is an amazing and beautiful place, full of culture and character. I think the next two years are going to be ones to remember.

Changing the emotions of music

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:14:32 +1000

My recently submitted doctoral thesis discusses CMERS - a Computational Music Emotion Rule System for the control of perceived musical emotions, that modifies a musical work at the levels of score and performance in real-time. I researched, designed, programmed, and tested CMERS, which handles all modifications to the musical work. CMERS achieves a change in perceived musical emotion through the application of music-emotion rules; these rules quantify the empirically observed relations between musical features and specific emotions (for example, major mode ≈ happy, minor mode ≈ sad).

Employing a 2-dimensional representation of emotion (see link below), CMERS was shown in testing to be successful in changing the perceived emotion of all selected music works to each of the four emotion space quadrants, referred to loosely as happy, angry, sad, and tender, with a mean accuracy of 78% and a multinomial logistic regression analysis of Χ²(9) = 11183.0, p < 0.0005 (N = 20).

PhD Testing Results

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 21:22:15 +1000

I have just finished the initial processing stage of the my thesis testing results. The conclusion? My thesis was a resounding success! The goal of the tests was to demonstrate that my system could take a musical work, automatically modify a series of musical parameters (tempo, mode, articulation, etc), which would result in a change to the perceived emotionality of the work as judged by listeners. For example, by increasing the tempo, changing to it to major mode etc, does it make the work more upbeat and cheerful? For every music piece selected, and every intended emotion type, the system was remarkably successful. Given the finicky nature of emotion studies this result is both unusual and outstanding.

T-day

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 21:22:33 +1000

Tomorrow I begin user testing of my completed Ph.D. music-emotion tool. I have expended an unbelievable amount of time and effort in getting to this point. The veracity of my core thesis will determined by a handful of tests.

Thesis race continues

Sat, 2 Jun 2007 16:54:04 +1000

Writing has progressed steadily since my last post. Now into week 5 I am currently working my way through the last part of chapter 5. Progress has been delayed somewhat in the rush to get testing clearance, along with looking for a Sydney abode. Still, here are the stats to date:

130 pages complete
Chapter 5 nearing completion
5 weeks in

I have about 5 weeks left, with about 5 chapters remaining. How much polish and gap filling will be required at this point I cannot say. It's going to be tight, but I think I'll be in a comfortable position of 80% completion by the time I leave; at least that is the goal.

The Great Thesis Race begins!

Wed, 16 May 2007 22:53:25 +1000

On July 16 I'll be starting my new job, heading up the new music psychology lab at Macquarie University in Sydney. It's a postdoctoral position (post phd), in which I'll be managing the lab (20-30%) and doing research (70%).

There's just one problem. I haven't written my thesis.

And so two weeks ago The Great Thesis Race began!

180 pages
10 chapters
8 weeks

At this point I am well under way having knocked up about 60 proofed pages, 1.75 chapters, and determined the document structure. Currently I'm aiming for around 1 chapter per week. My progress has been aided significantly by the numerous publications and confirmation proceedings.

Journal paper accepted and possible book chapter

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 19:49:32 +1000

Today I received news that my latest journal submission "Controlling Musical Emotionality: An Affective Computational Architecture for Influencing Musical Emotions" has been accepted for publication. The editors noted that given the quality and quantity of submissions, a book has been proposed. My paper may now feature as a chapter in this upcoming work.

This is excellent news indeed. If my second publication on the evolutionary origins of music is also accepted, I will have my feet firmly placed in two distinct scholarly fields.

My grant for Sweden is confirmed

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 18:54:07 +1000

Today I was awarded a hefty UQ scholarship that will allow me to travel to Sweden next year. The scholarship is designed to help me "improve the quality" of my Ph.D. I am very pleased with this as it means I'll now be able to go meet and work with the world leaders in computer science/music psychology.

My time in Sydney at the music perception workshop

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 22:13:25 +1000

I have returned from my 3 day stint in Sydney. I had wonderful time, socially and academically. Briefly, my talk was well received with a lot of positive comments. The trip started early on Sunday morning when I flew into Sydney around 8:30am, a day before the conference began. I was feeling pretty tired, as I had only gotten around 3 hours sleep the night before. I spent the afternoon jogging around Bankstown, checking out the local scene before getting into some parkour. I returned to the hotel and made use of their gym for an hour, before cooling off with a swim in the heated pool, and a luxurious session in the spa.

As the hotel dining area was closed for the evening I decided to head down the road to a local Lebanese restaurant, Summerland. Ordering a mixed platter on the advice of the manager, I found the food to be excellent. As the night progressed I made my way over to bar to settle down with a glass of red wine. I ended up spending the next 3 hours chatting and drinking with the manager, Jean-Pierre, and one of the other workers, Henry. Half French, half Lebanese, Jean-Pierre’s hedonist pursuits of drink, food, cigars and women found an ample accompaniment in our worldly conversations that evening.

I'm off to Sydney

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 15:40:41 +1000

Tomorrow I head off to Sydney to attend a workshop entitled "Music as Human Communication: An HCSNet Workshop on the Science of Music Perception, Performance and Cognition". It should be a great event, they will be discussing about 3 or 4 areas that I've already published in, or currently working on. Some of these include: the differentiation between perceived and induced emotions and how this effects measurement and representation in music [1], the connection between speech cues and musical emotion (in press), and rule systems for music performance [2]. Attending will also be a number of authors whose work I follow, and one in particular whose work I have used extensively in my own project.

I'm not sure if I'll have much of an Internet connection over this period, so posting may be a bit light. I'm hoping to catch up with the local Sydney parkour crowd for a couple hours tomorrow as well, and an old IT friend, so it should make for an interesting few days. My camera will be accompanying me on this journey too, so it may push me to install the new photo gallery.

Changing Musical Emotion through Score and Performance with a Computational Rule System - Ph.D.

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 19:47:25 +1000

Abstract

This page discusses CMERS - a Computational Music Emotion Rule System for the control of perceived musical emotions, that modifies a musical work at the levels of score and performance in real-time. I researched, designed, programmed, and tested CMERS, which handles all modifications to the musical work. CMERS achieves a change in perceived musical emotion through the application of music-emotion rules; these rules quantify the empirically observed relations between musical features and specific emotions (for example, major mode ≈ happy, minor mode ≈ sad).

Employing a 2-dimensional representation of emotion (seen below), CMERS was shown in testing to be successful in changing the perceived emotion of all selected music works to each of the four emotion space quadrants, referred to loosely as happy, angry, sad, and tender, with a mean accuracy of 78% and a multinomial logistic regression analysis of Χ²(9) = 11183.0, p < 0.0005 (N = 20).

Download Full Abstract

Music Samples

The above music samples are produced from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 20, Op. 49 No. 2 in G Major. In its unmodified state, this work is generally described by listeners as a happy upbeat work. Four emotionally modified versions have been produced by CMERS: sad, angry, tender, and happy (happier than original). To maximise the impact, and to best highlight the differences between tracks, try listening to them in order. Question: can you tell which musical features were modified?

All five samples have had expressive performance rules applied; this process attempts to make the expressionless computer MIDI file sound like a human performance, mimicking the subtle rubato and dynamic modulation through sophisticated score analysis. Question: could you tell that the unmodified version was generated by a computer? In user testing, very few participants were able to.