Live from ISMIR
This week I’m attending ISMIR – the 10th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference being held in Kobe Japan. At this conference researchers gather to advance the state of the art in music information retrieval. It is a varied bunch including librarians, musicologists, experts in signal processing, machine learning, text IR, visualization, HCI. I’ll be trying to blog the various talks and poster sessions throughout the conference, (but at some point the jetlag will kick in – making it hard for me to think, let alone type. It’s 9AM – the keynote is starting …
Opening Remarks
Masataka and Ich give the opening remarks. First some stats:
- 286 attendees from 28 countries
- 212 submissions fro 29 countries
- 123 papers (58%) accepted
- 214 reviewers
Tutorial Day at ISMIR
Posted by Paul in events, fun, Music, music information retrieval on October 26, 2009
Monday was tutorial day. After months of preparation, Justin finally got to present our material. I was a bit worried that our timing on the talk would be way out of wack and we’d have to self edit on the fly – but all of our time estimates seemed to be right on the money. whew! The tutorial was well attended with 80 or so registered – and lots of good questions at the end. All in all I was pleased at how it turned out. Here’s Justin talking about Echo Nest features:
After the tutorial a bunch of us went into town for dinner. 15 of us managed to find a restaurant that could accommodate us – and after lots of miming and pointing at pictures on the menu we managed to get a good meal. Lots of fun.
Walking around Kobe
Justin on the Port Liner
My tutorial co-presenter Justin and I spent the a few hours walking around the center of Kobe before we did our final tutorial preparation. I had a great time, Kobe is really a fun city. It was great to see the “Welcome to Kobe’ ISMIR 2009 signs on the Port Liner (the Monorail that goes from the main trainstation to the conference center).
I had sushi in a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant. Justin patiently walked me through the protocols and condiments. I had a really fun time. Being in Japan is really like being in the future.
A shopping street in Kobe
My first moments in Kobe – ISMIR 2009
After a 26 hours of travel from Nashua to Kobe Japan via Bostin, NYC, Tokyo to Osaka I arrived to find an extremely comfortable hotel at the conference center:
The conference hotel is the Portopia Hotel. It is quite nice. Here’s the lobby:
And the tower:
I went for a walk this morning to find an American-sized cup of coffee (24 oz is standard issue at Dunkin’s). This is the closest thing I could find. Looks like I’ll need another source of caffeine on this trip:
Thanks to Masataka, Ichiro and the rest of the conference committee for providing such a wonderful venue for ISMIR 2009.
The last quiet moment ….
The last quiet moment at the Echo Nest before Pladar summit and Music Hack Day take over.
Using Visualizations for Music Discovery
Posted by Paul in code, data, events, fun, Music, music information retrieval, research, The Echo Nest, visualization on October 22, 2009
On Monday, Justin and I will present our magnum opus – a three-hour long tutorial entitled: Using Visualizations for Music Discovery. In this talk we look the various techniques that can be used for visualization of music. We include a survey of the many existing visualizations of music, as well as talk about techniques and algorithms for creating visualizations. My hope is that this talk will be inspirational as well as educational spawning new music discovery visualizations. I’ve uploaded a PDF of our slide deck to slideshare. It’s a big deck, filled with examples, but note that large as it is, the PDF isn’t the whole talk. The tutorial will include many demonstrations and videos of visualizations that just are not practical to include in a PDF. If you have the chance, be sure to check out the tutorial at ISMIR in Kobe on the 26th.
Who’s going to Boston Music Hackday?
Posted by Paul in events, fun, Music, The Echo Nest, web services on October 21, 2009
Look at all the companies and organizations going to Music Hack Day.
The Echo Nest
SoundCloud
Indaba MusicHarmonix
Amie Street
8tracks
Playdar
Bandsintown
Tourfilter
NPR
Boxee
Sonos
Aviary
Conduit Labs
Topspin Media
Noteflight
Dorkbot
Libre.fm
It promises to be a really fun weekend. If you are interested in hacking music and working with the folks that are building the celestial jukebox make sure you sign up, slots are going fast. There’s one guy I’d 
to get to come to the hack day. I’m sure he’d be fascinated with all that goes on.
Music Explorer FX – Mobile Edition
Posted by Paul in java, Music, recommendation, The Echo Nest, web services on October 21, 2009
Caption contest: what is the guy in the back thinking?
Sten has created a mobile music discovery application that runs on a mobile device. The application shows similar artists using Echo Nest data. You can read about the app and give it a try (it runs on a desktop too), on Sten’s Blog: Music Explorer FX Mobile Edition
ISMIR Cloud browser
Posted by Paul in Music, music information retrieval, research on October 19, 2009
Maarten Grachten, Markus Schedl, Tim Pohle and Gerhard Widmer have created an ISMIR Cloud browser that lets you browse the 10 years of music information research via a text cloud. Check it out: The ISMIR Cloud Browser
Music Machinery 