A magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas about the future
May-June 2008 Vol. 42, No. 3
Forecasts for the Next 25 Years
Society
Playing Your Own TuneNew tools will soon allow audiophiles to listen to music less passively.
So you want to slow the "Minute Waltz" down? Add a dance beat to Bach? New "active listening" technologies may soon make it possible to do whatever you want to your music, creating new sounds to suit your personal taste.
Music consumers have increasingly put their own spin on the recordings they listen to, such as by downloading individual songs rather than buying entire albums and by creating digital playlists and jukeboxes rather than letting radio program directors impose unwanted songs on them all day.
But many listeners want to have still more control over the actual sounds they hear. Already, some computer-based media players (e.g., VLC, www.videolan.org) allow listeners to add a special effect to music during playback, such as creating a large-auditorium or a dance-club sound using the equalizer tool. Now audio engineers are exploring new opportunities to make the music experience even more personal and interactive.
The Semantic HiFi project at France's music and acoustics research center (IRCAM) is merging music players with computers and television to create hand-held devices that let listeners analyze the structure of a recording and then alter it on the spot: slow the tempo down, speed it up, tone down the brass, pump up the percussion, or remove the singer's voice and change the key to make a karaoke version.
"The hi-fi of the future will make sophisticated software tools for professional musicians available to a wider public," says project director Hugues Vinet. "Owners of next-generation hi-fi will be able to do more than just passively listen; they will have a tool which also allows them to manipulate music and to create new pieces themselves."
And thanks to the Internet, these active listeners will also be able to search for audiences for their new musical creations. Whether such audiences will be receptive to the new music from their technologically empowered but musically untrained peers is another question. Of course, using their own technologies, these new listeners will also be able to transform the new music to suit their own tastes.
Musical Technologies and Education
Such technologies could either make "amateurism" a passé concept in future music or enhance amateurs' abilities sufficiently to inspire more music lovers to seek professional training. And technologies are helping improve music education as well.
One tool is i-Maestro's gesture analysis system, which uses 3-D imaging and sensors to analyze, for instance, a violinist's bowing technique, much in the same way such technologies have been used to analyze golfers' swings or figure skaters' jumps and spins.
Another tool is the "score follower," a display that tracks the musician's place in the sheet music and automatically turns the page. It can also provide better-synchronized accompaniment or backing track. These educational technologies enable more students to practice alone or in a virtual classroom environment that simulates the input of their fellow musicians, according to i-Maestro project developer Kia Ng. —Cynthia G. Wagner
Sources: "Next Generation Hi-Fi" and "Music Maestro!" ICT Results (February 1 and February 4, 2008), Cordis, 4 Gallery Ravenstein, Brussels B-1000, Belgium. Web site http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults.
Semantic HiFi, IRCAM, 1, place Igor-Stravinsky, 75004 Paris, France. Web site http://shf.ircam.fr/.
Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Research in Music, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom. Web site www.icsrim.org.uk or www.i-maestro.org .
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