Evandro Manara Miletto

Principles for Music Creation by Novices in Networked Music Environments

Abstract Networked music environments (NMEs) allow experimental artists to explore the implications of interconnecting their computers for musical purposes. Despite an evident progress in recent years of networked music research, very little attention has been paid to a very common potential kind of user: novices in music, that is, users with little or no previous music knowledge. Indeed, the same way that principles of Rich Internet Applications like YouTube and Flickr have turned the passive user into an active producer of content, we are investigating the issues to be considered by networked music environments in order to allow effective support of musical creation and experimentation by novices. CODES—a Web-based environment designed to support cooperative ways of music creation by novices—puts these principles into practice. The goal of this paper is to present, discuss and illustrate two main principles: (1) music creation by novices should be prototypical; and (2) music creation by novices should be cooperative. These principles have emerged during CODES design and development and we think they are a good starting point for further investigation of a novice-oriented perspective of NME dimensions.

CODES: a Web-based environment for cooperative music prototyping

This paper presents CODES – COoperative Music Prototype DESign, a Web-based environment for cooperative music prototyping. Its main goal is to allow any user – especially those with no expertise in music – to draft musical pieces collectively, in a prototyping manner. So, such musical sketches – we call them music prototypes – can be repeatedly tested, listened to, and modified, not only by their original creators but also by the online partners that will cooperate in their refinement, until their final form is reached. CODES enables sharing of knowledge by means of rich interaction and argumentation mechanisms associated to each prototype modification, which are also secure ways of providing awareness to this asynchronous collaborative environment. In this paper, we present the concept of music prototyping and introduce the main aspects related to cooperative prototyping of musical pieces, focusing on issues concerning a musical piece as a collective creation of a virtual community. We will also show some usage examples as a means to describe the overall architecture, behaviour and potentials of the CODES environment.

Interfaces for musical activities and interfaces for musicians are not the same: the case for codes, a web-based environment for cooperative music prototyping

In this paper, some requirements of user interfaces for musical activities are investigated and discussed, particularly focusing on the necessary distinction between interfaces for musical activities and interfaces for musicians. We also discuss the interactive and cooperative aspects of music creation activities in CODES, a Web-based environment for cooperative music prototyping, designed mainly for novices in music. Aspects related to interaction flexibility and usability are presented, as well as features to support manipulation of complex musical information, cooperative activities and group awareness, which allow users to understand the actions and decisions of all group members cooperating and sharing a music prototype.

Educação Musical Auxiliada por Computador: Algumas Considerações e Experiências

O objetivo deste trabalho e tecer consideracoes relativas a educacao musical auxiliada por computador, salientar topicos que consideramos necessarios para este tipo de pratica e algumas caracteristicas de sistemas que os contemplam. Discute, ainda, como explorar a computacao musical como meio de inclusao digital, citando experiencias de pesquisas na area.

Musical interaction patterns: communicating computer music knowledge in a multidisciplinary project

The growing popularity of mobile devices gave birth to a still emergent research field, called Mobile Music, and concerning the development of musical applications for use in these devices. Our particular research investigates interaction design within this field, taking into account relations hips with ubiquitous computing contexts, and applying knowledge from several disciplines, mainly Computer Music and Human-Computer Interaction. In this paper we propose using the concept of patterns in such multidisciplinary design context. Design patterns are, essentially, common solutions for specific design problems, which have been systematically collected and documented. Since they help designers, allowing them to reuse proven solutions within a certain domain, we argue that they can aid multidisciplinary design, facilitating communication and allowing knowledge transfer among team members of diverse fields. We illustrate our point by describing a set of musical interaction patterns that came out of our investigation so far, showing how they encapsulate Computer Music knowledge and how this was helpful in our own design process.

Cooperation in musical prototypes design

This paper presents the main characteristics and discusses the rationale for the cooperative mechanisms implemented in CODES - a Web-based environment designed to support cooperative music prototyping. The CODES environment aims to provide actual cooperation, social knowledge construction, argumentation and negotiation among the different actors of musical prototypes design activities. A brief description of CODES and its original concept of “music prototyping” is initially presented, characterizing this activity as non-technical products design. This is followed by concepts and descriptions of CODES cooperation mechanisms, illustrating how they increase awareness of other users and their intentions in the context of group activities for non-technical design. We present the design and prototypical implementation of CODES as well as some encouraging results from preliminary qualitative tests.

CODES: supporting awareness in a web-based environment for collective music prototyping

CODES is a Web-based environment designed to support cooperative music prototyping. This paper discusses the mechanisms which were implemented in CODES in order to provide group awareness: music prototyping rationale, action logging and modification marks. The main characteristics of CODES are initially presented, followed by descriptions and discussions of the proposed awareness mechanisms.

Using the Web-Based Cooperative Music Prototyping Environment CODES in Learning Situations

This poster presents CODES – Cooperative Sound Design, a web-based environment for cooperative music prototyping, that aims to provide users (musicians or non-specialists in music) with the possibility of creating musical examples (prototypes) that can be tested, modified and constantly played, both by their initial creator and by their partners, who will cooperate for the refining of the initial musical prototype. CODES main aspects – mainly with respect to interaction and cooperation issues in learning situations are briefly discussed.

Who Are the Web Composers

Web 2.0 with RIA (Rich Internet Applications) becomes a wide field for social networks and new distributed collective practices. In this paper we explain why and how CODES, a novice-oriented Web-based environment for cooperative music prototyping, provides support to a new practice in which novices in music may produce (not only consume) music cooperatively. CODES stimulates the emergence of new user roles --- these users not only create and edit cooperatively their own music but also may participate in discussions and exchange ideas about their contributions. The implications of this Web-based group music making and shared authorship --- some of them identified through actual experiments --- are also presented.

Agent-Based Guitar Performance Simulation

The goal of this paper is to describe a systemaided performance and composition tool that aims to expand guitarist capacities by providing innovative ways in which the user can interact with the system. In order to achieve that, we decided to use an agentbased approach, independently modeling the active elements involved in a guitar performance as autonomous agents — named Left-Hand, Right-Hand, and Speaker (the guitar itself). These agents are able to communicate to each other in order to make some musical decisions, specially related to the chord’s shape choice. The musical elements (harmony and rhythm) are independently defined respectively by the Left-Hand and Right-Hand agents. The most relevant aspects of this work, however, are the algorithms and strategies to process both harmonic and rhythmic data. Finally, we perform an evaluation of the system and discuss the results of the implemented techniques.