Music is a truly cross-cultural phenomenon which enriches the lives of billions of people around the world on a daily basis. A University of Bristol research student has gained a prestigious Fulbright Award to pursue research into developing automatic means of extracting useful information from sound.
Understanding how music is composed, structured, shared within and between cultures offers a unique insight into a society at large, but until very recently has been a task painstakingly undertaken by experts on a song-by-song basis. This, coupled with the current scale of personal music collections — typical users have tens of thousands of songs in their libraries — means that automatic methods are not only desirable but necessary.
Matt McVicar, who is studying for a PhD in Complexity Sciences at the Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences (BCCS), gained the award after a highly competitive application process culminating in a series of interviews at Fulbright Commission in London. The award will allow him to carry out his research investigating the automatic analysis of musical features from audio, with an emphasis on chords at the Columbia University in New York, with Professor Dan Ellis at the Laboratory for Recognition and Organisation of Speech and Audio for a year.
To date, Matt’s research has shown that embracing the complexity of the interactions between various musical aspects such as the chords, key, bassline and beat structure leads to an improvement in recognition accuracy of chords. This was demonstrated in a recent benchmarking evaluation where the Bristol team scored 1st, 2nd and 4th against specialist research teams from around the world.
The implications of this is that one cannot ignore the interdependent relationships within music, meaning complex models have to be developed in order to understand them. The benefit of this approach being that many aspects of music can be estimated simultaneously and efficiently with one algorithm.
Fulbright Awards are granted to people from any area of academia who are or have the potential to become leaders in their field. Candidates recommended for Fulbright Awards have high academic achievement, a compelling project proposal and/or statement of purpose, demonstrated leadership potential, and flexibility and adaptability to interact successfully with the host community abroad.
Matt said: “I’m delighted to have been given this opportunity through US-UK Fulbright Commission. My training at the BCCS has given me the ideal skills required to work in an interdisciplinary field at a world-leading institution and I am confident the visit will be mutually beneficial.”
Professor John Hogan, BCCS Director and Professor of Mathematics in the University’s Department of Engineering Mathematics, added: "I am delighted for Matt. This is a fantastic achievement. As a member of one of the early cohorts in BCCS, he wanted to see how complexity sciences could be useful in areas outside the traditional subjects of Engineering and Science. By looking at music and how we perceive it, he has demonstrated the broad reach of Complexity and the inventiveness and application of the BCCS students.