Developing visualization software for musicians

This paper describes the initial stages of the design, construction, and evaluation of a software program that presents real-time music visualization to musicians as a form of feed-back. I identify the musical features of pitch, loudness, and timbre, all of central importance to musicians, as good targets for visualization. I then describe several audio analysis tech-niques that can be used to approximately extract these features. The needs and preferences of potential users with regard to musical features and the specifics of the visual presentations were investigated through a user study involving the testing of a prototype. I explain the goals of the study and the architecture and specifics of the prototype. Finally I summarize the results of the study and propose future directions of research. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people: • the 38 participants who completed my survey and especially the 4 who agreed to spend an hour of their semesters doing an interview. • my advisor, Richard Salter, for keeping me on track over the course of this year. • Nancy Darling for providing valuable feedback as I wrote the survey questions and applied for IRB approval. • the Conservatory Deans and the organizers of the College of Arts and Sciences Orches-tra for agreeing to distribute the survey to the students on their mailing lists. • my trumpet-playing housemate for test-driving the survey before I sent it out to hun-dreds of people. • my piano and flute teachers whose effort over the years inspired me to undertake this project in the first place. • my wife, Katie Kuksenok, for encouraging me to take the project in directions I would never have thought of, for providing advice on analyzing some of the data, and for finding lots of nitpicky problems with this paper. • the encouragement of countless other people who I spoke to about this project. ii