Bob Cain wrote in message ...

It wasn't just to get you to jump through hoops, Ryan. I'm
truly interested in how a musically creative mind would
specify the problem in some detail. That's good input for
the more academic oriented folks who are working and
thinking at the computational level.

Well, being both a musician and an engineer's son, I'd have to say
that the real work would be done by the mathmaticians. I think I
adequately described the problem, but then again, since I know exactly
what I want, it is hard for me to evaluate wether or not I expressed
it. I'm sure your old english teacher went over this phenomenon once
or twice. If there is something about the description (not the math)
that you think needs a little more flesh, name it and I will further
describe.


The biggest problem with all of this that I see is how to
specify in detail what's in the music that can be considered
features worth thinking about extracting algoritmically. If
a human can't get real down with that part then there is
little hope of implementing anything useful.

Humans aren't so absolute. Give us some choices however, and we can
easily narrow it down.

Granted, for
the non-technically but strongly musically inclined it could
be a very frustrating experience to see how difficult it is
to reduce things that seem obvious to her to terms that have
any hope of an impelementation, but you gotta start somewhere.

If I understood math better I would probably be able to reduce it a
little more myself. As it is though, I think we will have to work
together for optimum results.

Ryan wrote:

Well, being both a musician and an engineer's son, I'd have to say
that the real work would be done by the mathmaticians.

I disagree. The hard part is the definition. It isn't
going to be math, at any rate, it will be algorithm and
there is a huge difference. Elements of math will, of
course, enter into it and what tools there are in that
regard need to be understood but putting them all together
in useful procedures that illustrate the definition is
probably going to be a lot easier than setting down those
definitions in an objectively meaningful way in the first place.

I think I
adequately described the problem, but then again, since I know exactly
what I want, it is hard for me to evaluate wether or not I expressed
it.

Exactly. Makes perfect sense to you.

I'm sure your old english teacher went over this phenomenon once
or twice. If there is something about the description (not the math)
that you think needs a little more flesh, name it and I will further
describe.

Start with some kind of objective measure of the subjective
that is in your head.

If I understood math better I would probably be able to reduce it a
little more myself.

I strongly urge you to consider that path. Knowing what you
want out of it will slant your math education in what could
be very productive ways.

As it is though, I think we will have to work
together for optimum results.

I have less hope for that. Our languages are too dissimilar
(and I'm probably way too old to learn yours.) :-)


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

Ryan wrote:
Bob Cain wrote in message ...

It wasn't just to get you to jump through hoops, Ryan. I'm
truly interested in how a musically creative mind would
specify the problem in some detail. That's good input for
the more academic oriented folks who are working and
thinking at the computational level.

Well, being both a musician and an engineer's son, I'd have to say
that the real work would be done by the mathmaticians. I think I
adequately described the problem, but then again, since I know exactly
what I want, it is hard for me to evaluate wether or not I expressed
it. I'm sure your old english teacher went over this phenomenon once
or twice. If there is something about the description (not the math)
that you think needs a little more flesh, name it and I will further
describe.

My suggestion: get Octave, which is a public domain Matlab clone. Load
some samples into it. Start doing some ffts on some of the samples and
looking at plots. There will also be things in there for waterfall plots,
correlation, all kinds of nifty things to play with. I think they may also
have some wavelet decomposition stuff, which is another way of taking
waveforms apart.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

(Ryan) wrote in message . com...

I'm looking to find out more about writing some software that will use
traditional classical instruments to emulate "natural" or "non musical
sounds." The software will perform some type of analyses on an audio
file, I imagine FFT would be used at some point, but the problem with
FFT is that it only tells you what "perfect" or pure sine wave based
frequencies are present in a sound. Besides the flute, not much else
in an orchestra has anything close to a sine wave output. After this
analysis is done, the software will look through a library of sounds
made by traditional instruments. These sounds will include every
noise and playing style every traditional instrument can produce. The
software will then juggle the sounds around at various dynamic levels
in various rhythms and etc until it comes up with the closest
combination to the original sound. Perhaps a car engine sound file
would yield three Double Basses, a flute or two in very quiet
irregular rhythms, and maybe a horn would be involved during gear
changes.

That topic seems like it would be related to musical instrument sound
synthesis, so you might want to see if there is a newsgroup that deals
spcifically with musical instrument synthesis. Because most natural
sounds and most instrument sounds are non-stationary varying, I do not
believe that FFT analysis is going to be useful. You may want to
consider coss-correlation instead.