From: jacob@max.cc.brandeis.edu ( )
Subject: Re: Sightreading and Computers
Organization: Brandeis University Math Department
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 04:52:38 GMT

In article <4181@papaya.bbn.com> cbarber@bbn.com (Chris Barber) writes:

>I never said that the task was technically impossible, just very difficult.  I
>still believe this task is a factor of magnitude more difficult than teaching
>touch typing.

No argument about that. Sorry if I misconstrued your implication.

>What you would need to do would be to
>recognize in real time that the student was changing tempo and be able to
>recognize what the tempo was. Merely changing granularity will not do the
>trick because then any changes in tempo would create a situation where the
>granularity would be way to large in the fast sections in order to accomadate
>the slower sections.

Quantization can be applied to small variable length windows and various
granularities can be tried for each window, etc. I don't think dealing with
tempo changes in a reasonable way (I don't know about a musical way) is that
much harder than dealing with general rhythmic inaccuracy. Only doing it in
real time does require a minimum of computing power, as the approach I'm
suggesting would be a brute force approach...

Probably further discussion of the technical issues should take place in
comp.music, if at all.

>Of course I haven't given the feasibility of the task a complete analysis, but
>my reaction is not only based on my experience with how much work I had to put
>into my own sight-reading acquisition but also on my experience as an
>engineer.  I have generally found that most programming tasks are far more
>difficult than what they appear when a complete analysis is yet to be made.

That is possible too. I haven't given that issue a complete analysis either,
and most importantly I have never written such a program. My opinions are as
unsubstantiated as yours of course and it might well turn out that you are
right and I am wrong, although in this instance it's not clear what our
difference of opinion is. I take it we both think it's feasible, only you
think it is harder than I think it is...

>Actually, I have quite a pragmatic philosphy: if it works, use it.  If someone
>does produce a computerized sight-reading tutor that works, I have no problem
>with using it. 

And I do think it _is_ perfectly legitimate to have problems using such a tutor
and to believe that this is not how sightreading should be learnt. (To mitigate
this statement though, I'd like to stress I don't see a computer program as a
tool to _teach_ one sightreading, which one actually teaches to oneself , but
as a tool to give one an opportunity to teach oneself sighreading and to
control how well one's succeeded.) In any case I wanted to leave that out of
the discussion.

One issue that hasn't been addressed in this discussion on sightreading is
what exactly all those people want to learn to sightread for?

Nobody has made that very clear as if sightreading was a goal in itself,
whereas I believe as a skill in itself sightreading is a pretty useless
skill to have. Sighreading is a means to an end and that those ends were
not made exteremely explicit by those who were interested in sighreading...

For some motives of learning sightreading I would see a computer tutor as
perfectly inappropriate because certain goals should be directly connected
with a development of general musicianship that the very process of learning
to sightread (efficiently, musically, as opposed to mechnically) should give
you an opportunity for, whereas a mechanical computer tutor (especially if
it tries to impose tempo and such) would give you too much opportunity to
concentrate on the mechanical part at the expense of a real musical
understanding of the text.
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical