The net is given a training set of several thousand spectra with particular characteristics, and it rapidly learns to differentiate between timbre-classes based on these characteristics. Although the network model is rather crude, the system actually can learn to identify timbral features. Timbre remains one of the most poorly-understood areas of music theory and music cognition. Digitization Projects Audio recordings made in the middle of the 20th-century are beginning to deteriorate from aging and material decomposition. The CMC has successfully completed a number of archive projects, earning a well-deserved reputation as one of the few places available with both the correct equipment and trained expertise to do critical archival work.
All software is in the public domain, and source code is distributed with the files.
All files are in gzipped tarred format, and compile under Irix. In addition to developing our own software, we have recently been active building our own hardware to facilitate different kinds of physical interaction with digital sound. At the CMC, Dan Trueman has been experimenting with multi-channel spherical speaker arrays in an effort to create new kinds of electronic chamber music and to broaden the acoustic possibilities offered by current realtime signal processing and synthesis techniques. By combining these speakers with personalized configurations of hardware sensor devices, we can create new musical instruments with unexplored expressive potentials. A collaborative project of Ballet Frankfurt, Lego, mak.frankfurt, Paul Kaiser, and the Computer Music Center of Columbia University.