Music Research Lab - University of Rochester

MRL Focus & Goals

Research and teaching that combines music theory and performance with acoustics, signal processing, telecommunications, and computing.

To perform musically-informed research and to develop technologies that reflect the expertise of musicians as well as scientists and engineers. To combine students in music and engineering working on innovative projects to generate novel solutions.

MSEE Degree in Engineering and Music

New fall 2008

In this new program students may earn their Master of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering (MSEE) with a concentration in Musical Acoustics and Signal Processing. With core courses in Digital Signal Processing, Musical Acoustics, Computational Music, Recording Arts, and Audio Signal Processing for Analysis and Synthesis of Music students may complete course work in Acoustics, Music Perception and Cognition, or other areas of ECE such as Digital and Analog IC Design, Computer Architecture, Communications or other studies.

more information

Innovation in Physical Modelling

The MRL announces a digitally reproduced music in a file nearly 1,000 times smaller than a regular MP3 file. The music, a 20-second clarinet solo, is encoded in less than a single kilobyte, and is made possible by recreating both the real-world physics of a clarinet and the physics of a clarinet player. The result, announced at the International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing held in Las Vegas, is not perfect but is closer to a realistic sound.
more information

Try some of the listening experiments presented here

Quick Links

Eastman Music Theory Department
Eastman School of Music

Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
University of Rochester

Listening Experiment I

You will be asked to listen to a series of ten pairs of sound samples.

Rate each pair in terms of similarity, the left-most button being most dissimilar and the right-most button being the most similar.

Once you have decided, click the "next" button and you will be taken to the next pair. When you are done click on the submit button:

Kauffman Faculty Research Grant (2005-2006), UR Center for Entrepreneurship

"How do you Experience your Music? Enhancing the Digital Music Experience through Embedded Data" (Dr. David Headlam; Eastman School of Music; Dr. Mark Bocko; School of Engineering and Applied Sciences)

Abstract: The proposed study of entrepreneurship builds upon an ongoing technology project to develop methods for embedding information in music files, but the real point of the study is to explore how a worldwide virtual community forms and interacts to adopt and develop uses for new web-based technologies. Specifically, we are interested in exploring the basic features that enable a technology to "take off," (e.g. sites like "mySpace" or "YouTube"). More specifically, we may ask, how does "buzz" develop and how does the use of a new web technology spread? In this new model of entrepreneurship a single individual does not drive the process, but rather, value emerges from the collective activity of an on-line community. In fact, new web technologies may have uses and impact that were completely unanticipated by the technology inventors. A central research question is: how does an online community reach a consensus on the use of a new technology? Is the community a true open source democracy, or do multiple "experts" exert control over the community with the technology reaching the critical tipping point when the key experts reach agreement? We propose to study this process within the context of our music metadata system. Success of the project will not be measured simply by gauging the spread of the new technology but rather by the insights we hope to achieve by exploring the mechanisms by which a new web technology spreads through monitoring communication among the online communities and observing how this communication turns into consensus.

Publications

M. Sterling, X. Dong, and M.Bocko, "Representation of Solo Clarinet Music by Physical Modeling Synthesis," in Proc. IEEE Intl. Conf. Acoustics Speech and Sig. Proc. 2008 ICASSP 2008, Las Vegas, NV, March 30 -- April 4 2008.

X. Dong, M. Sterling, and M. Bocko, "Empirical Physical Modeling Based Music Synthesis and Representation," J. Acoust Soc. Am., Vol. 122, No. 5, Pt. 2, November 2007.

Bartlette, C., Headlam, D, Velikic, G, and Bocko, M.F., "Effect of Network Latency on Interactive Musical Performance", Music Perception, Volume 24, Issue 1, 2006, pp 49-62.

Altun, O., Sharma, G., Bocko, M., "Multiple watermarking: a vector space projection approach", Proc. SPIE Int. Soc. Opt. Eng. 6065, 60650O (2006).

Ignjatovic, Z., Bocko, M.F., "A method for efficient interpolation of discrete-time signals by using a blue-noise mapping method", Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing 2005, (ICASSP '05), Volume 4, pp: IV213-216.

Altun, O., Sharma, G., Celik, M., Bocko, M.F., "Semi-fragile hierarchical watermarking in a set theoretic framework", Proc. of the International Conference on Image Processing 2005, pp. 1001-1004.

Altun, O., Sharma, G, Bocko, M.F., "Informed watermark embedding in fractional Fourier domains", EUSIPCO , Sep. 2005 (in press).

Sterling M., Titlebaum, E., Bocko, M.F., "An adaptive spread-spectrum data hiding technique for digital audio", Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing 2005, (ICASSP '05), pp. 685-688.

Altun, O., Sharma G., Celik M., Bocko, M.F., "Hierarchical set theoretic watermarking for tamper detection,", Proc. Western NY Image Processing Workshop 2005, pp. 23-26.

Altun, O., Sharma, G., Celik, M., Sterling, M., Titlebaum, E., Bocko,M.F., "Morphological steganalysis of audio and the principle of diminishing marginal distortions", Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing 2005, pp:21 - 24.

Dong, X., Bocko, M.F., Ignjatovic Z., "Data hiding via phase manipulation of audio signals", 2004 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. vol.5, pp.V-377-380, (2004).

Velikic, G, Titlebaum, E.L., Bocko, M.F., "Musical note segmentation employing combined time and frequency analyses", IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, pp.IV-277-280, (2004).

Bocko, M.F., Altun, O, Headlam D.J., Titlebaum E.L., "An expressive and compact representation of musical sound", IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, pp.IV-249-252, (2004).

Dong, X., Bocko, M.F., and Ignjatovic, Z., "Robustness analysis of a digital audio steganographic method based on phase manipulation," Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Signal Processing (ICSP) 2004, Vol. 3, pp:2375-2378.

Headlam, Dave. "Multimedia for Music Study on the Web: Macromedia Director." Music Theory Online Vol. 3, No. 5 (September, 1997). URL: http://boethius.music.ucsb.edu/mto/issues/mto.97.3.5/mto.97.3.5.headlam_frames.html

Presentations

I can name that tune in 6 bits: Physical Models for a more compressed Musical Language (Provost's Lunch, Spring 1908)

Empirical Physical Modelling-Based Music Synthesis and Representation. (Thesis Talk, Amy Dong, Spring 1908)

Headlam, Dave. "Introduction to Music Representation" Eastman / Cornell Cognition Symposium, 2005.

Bartlette, Christopher; Headlam, Dave; Bocko, Mark F. "Latency, Musicality, and Network Performance." Presented at the 2003 National Conference of the Society for Music Theory. Madison, WI. Also presented at the 2003 Conference of the Society for Music Cognition and Perception. Las Vegas, NV. Presented along with "Acoustics and Psychoacoustics: Dimensions of Human Perception and Cognition" to The Eastman/UR-BCS/Cornell Music Cognition Symposia, March 1, 2002.

"Data Hiding in Digital Audio", MF Bocko - IEEE Signal Processing Society, Rochester Chapter, March, 2003 - ece.rochester.edu

Mark F. Bocko and Zeljko Ignjatovic, "Data Hiding via Phase Manipulation of Audio Signals" . Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Rochester December 24, 2002

Headlam, Dave. "Acoustics: Recent Developments." Presented to The Eastman/UR-BCS/Cornell Music Cognition Symposia, 1999.

Headlam, Dave. "Computers and Multimedia: Director." Invited presentation at the University of Colorado, Boulder Colorado, November 1997.

Headlam, Dave. "Whole lotta Sound: Timbre in Rock." Presented at the Diversity Session, 1997 National Conference of the Society for Music Theory in Phoenix, Arizona.

Headlam, Dave. "Timbral Analysis and Multimedia: The Madigrals of George Crumb." Poster Session on "Computers and the Analysis of Twentieth-Century Music." Presented at the 1997 National Conference of the Society for Music Theory in Phoenix, Arizona.

Mark Bocko, Chair
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY 14627

bocko at ece.rochester.edu
585-275-4879

Jennifer Steward
Department Administrator
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY 14627

jennifer at ece.rochester.edu
585-275-4060

Dave Headlam
Music Theory Department
Eastman School of Music
26 Gibbs St.
Rochester, NY 14604

dheadlam at esm.rochester.edu
585-274-1568

Kathy Buechel
Music Theory Department
Eastman School of Music
26 Gibbs St.
Rochester, NY 14604

kbuechel at esm.rochester.edu
585-274-1552

The

Music Research Lab

was created from a collaboration between

Mark Bocko, Chair and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the University of Rochester,

Professor Bocko earned his PhD in Physics from the University of Rochester in 1984, and after a brief postdoc, joined the ECE department in 1985. Currently, he serves as the Department Chairperson. He has research and teaching experience in the areas of sensors and transducers, low-noise electronics, high speed digital superconducting electronics, quantum coherent electronics and quantum noise, microelectronic fabrication, microwaves, nonlinear dynamics, digital signal processing, musical acoustics, and digital audio. Professor Bocko has enjoyed teaching courses on solid state devices, microwaves, nonlinear dynamics, circuits, DSP in audio, and engineering design. Currently, his teaching is in primarily in the latter two areas. Over the years, he was won three separate teaching awards at the University of Rochester.

Dave Headlam, Professor of Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music, the University of Rochester

Dave Headlam is Professor of Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music, the University of Rochester. He received his BM at the University of Western Ontario in 1980, and PhD in Music Theory from the University of Michigan. Headlam has published widely on music post-1900, popular music, rhythm, and music and technology, and he is co-founder of the Music Research Lab, a collaborative venture for exploring the boundaries of music and science. His book, The Music of Alban Berg (Yale U Press, 1996), received an ASCAP Deems Taylor award in 1997.

Fall 2008

Faculty

Mark Bocko (ECE)
Laurel Carney
Dave Headlam (ESM)
Jack Mottley (ECE)
Alice Quillen (PAS)
Davy Temperley (ESM)
Ed Titlebaum (ECE)

Students

Mark Sterling (ECE)

Amy Dong (ECE)

Justin Lundberg (ESM)

July 11 discussion points

Rim - MRL Discussion - Friday July 11, 2:00

Alistair Mitchell
Vice President, Multimedia Integration
Research In Motion Limited

Dave Headlam
Professor of Music Theory
Secondary Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Mark Bocko
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Affiliate Professor of Music Theory

Andrew Flowers
Eastman School of Music

Music Research Lab, has existed for about 10 years
DOD, NSF grants for music technologies

Steganography, steganalysis work several years ago for DOD
Recent renewed interest in MPEG files with Kauffman entrepreneur grant (UR)

Core Capability: within MPEG compressed, as well as uncompressed audio, music, and video files, the ability to exploit unused space to embed any kind of computer file, program

Can embed so that the file size is unchanged and the embedded files are imperceptible and undetectable, or with less robust methods, that are nonetheless secure, where may be detected but not decoded

Can also add to file size to expand possibilities

Suggestions for Possible uses

1. on cell phone: music and business files together, the business files can be encoded and embedded within the music files, if the cell is lost, only music files will be found, and internal files are encoded

2. authentication key technology: private key creates hash from message, we can encrypt and embed the hash as well as a public key, within the message -- received can extract both to verify the authenticity of file

process could be done on BB servers, so that no malicious code gets on phone

once file authenticated and decoded, embedded messages, URLs, java applets, ete.can be accessed

3. the mpeg container includes prepended "tag" type space that can be used for web 2.0 type applications, for programs, files, etc. that will only grow, imagine having private versions of these files and programs, again with authentication and encoding

4. the embedded data intimately bound up with the media data - could embed in ways that it is not easy to remove - in a video or audio, could embedded advertising that is timestamped

5. personalize music files with embedded photos, comments, etc. etc. send to friends

Friday January 23	Dave Headlam, (ESM)	"What is Music Theory?"
Friday January 30	--	no event
Friday February 6	Dave Headlam (ESM) and Justin Lundberg (ESM)	"Computer models of musical information"
Friday February 13	--	no event
Friday February 20	no event [ CHANGE!]
Friday February 27	Betsy Marvin (ESM)	"Music, Memory, Pitch, and Pitch Memory
Friday March 6	no event	Friday March 13	Spring break
Friday March 20	Norm Carey	improvisation and performance -- LOCATION CSB 426
Friday March 27	no event
Friday April 3	Wayne Knox (Optics)	"Why play guitar in 35+ tunings ?" -- LOCATION CSB 426
Friday April 10	Professor WanTong Jiang, Associate Dean of the China Conservatory in Beijing, China, will give a presentation on his recent research : "Research on Chaos, Fractals, and Music." A theorist and composer, Professor Jiang is visiting the Eastman School of Music after attending the premiere of his composition at Weill Recital Hall in New York City, performed by Eastman students Eugene Pook (clarinet), David Leung (violin), Cherry Tsang (piano), and Liu Liu (piano).	"Fractals and Music"
Friday April 17	no Event
Friday April 24	Jonathan Turner (Nazareth College)	"The Idiot's Guide to Hindemith's Theory of Chords"