Audio Analysis

• Module Basics Audio: Introduction
• Tutorial Spectral Representation with the Sonic Visualiser
• Tutorial Spectral Representation of Vocal Recordings
• Sonic Visualiser as transcription tool

• Module Advanced Audio: Introduction
• Tutorial Vamp Plugins Part 1: Sound
• Tutorial Vamp Plugins Part 2: Chroma
• Tutorial Vamp Plugins Part 3: Onsets, Beat and Tempo
• Tutorial Sonic Annotator: Corpus Analyses

• Seminar: AI-assisted audio analysis of music and soundscapes

• Installation of Audio Analysis Software

The modules and tutorials provided here use issues of music analysis to introduce students to various options for computer-assisted analysis of audio files. The teaching unit Audio Analysis is composed of a basic module (Basics Audio) and a specialization module (Advanced Audio).

The modules can be done in self-study or within courses. The duration of the teaching unit is approximately 4-6 hours or three 90-minutes sessions with additional preparation, homework and optional deepening. But first to the question:

There are certainly many different objectives for the analysis of music. Fundamental, however, are the following two motives:

• I want to discover and experience, to comprehend and understand something that is hidden to me at first hearing: How does a certain effect of the music come about? What is it about what I hear that makes it beautiful or moving or exciting?
• Or I want to illustrate or clarify something - especially when I want to convey and share my experience of the music with others.

Analysis as a discovering and descriptive approach to music always includes to make musical events explicit, and thus is a means for understanding and a prerequisite for communicating music.

There are a number of applications and objectives of musical analysis. Here are perhaps the most important:

• Analysis of a single piece of music: the special features of a particular piece are analytically explored. On this basis, an interpretation of the piece can then be made, e.g., with regard to specific effects and meanings.
• Style analysis comprises the exploration of the peculiarities of a certain style in a temporally or regionally delimited area or of a personal style. Examples of individual recordings and performances that are typical of a particular style may be examined - or an attempt may be made to derive the style from an analysis of all (or as many as possible) pieces.
• Music historical perspective: what stylistic directions can be determined? How are these related to each other on a level of tonal design - and how do they differ from each other?

The lesson on audio analysis focuses on recordings - and thus on listening to music. Recordings can be visualized with the help of the computer, especially by displaying the spectral energy distribution in relation to time (Basics Audio). For recordings of popular music, ethnic music, but also electroacoustic music, further approaches based on algorithms have been developed (Advanced Audio).

The project is currently in the testing phase. Feedback is welcome: analyse@hfm-weimar.de