Digital Da Vinci ― Computers in Music

The Digital Da Vinci book series opens with the interviews of music mogul Quincy Jones, MP3 inventor Karlheinz Brandenburg, Tommy Boy founder Tom Silverman and entertainment attorney Jay L. Cooper. A strong supporter of science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs in schools, The Black Eyed Peas founding member will.i.am announced in July 2013 his plan to study computer science. Leonardo da Vinci, the epitome of a Renaissance man, was an Italian polymath at the turn of the 16th century. Since the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, the division of labor has brought forth specialization in the workforce and university curriculums. The endangered species of polymaths is facing extinction. Computer science has come to the rescue by enabling practitioners to accomplish more than ever in the field of music. In this book, Newton Lee recounts his journey in executive producing a Billboard-charting song like managing agile software development; M. Nyssim Lefford expounds producing and its effect on vocal recordings; Dennis Reidsma, Mustafa Radha and Anton Nijholt survey the field of mediated musical interaction and musical expression; Isaac Schankler, Elaine Chew and Alexandre Francois describe improvising with digital auto-scaffolding; Shlomo Dubnov and Greg Surges explain the use of musical algorithms in machine listening and composition; Juan Pablo Bello discusses machine listening of music; Stephen and Tim Barrass make smart things growl, purr and sing; Raffaella Folgieri, Mattia Bergomi and Simone Castellani examine EEG-based brain-computer interface for emotional involvement in games through music and last but not least, Kai Ton Chau concludes the book with computer and music pedagogy. Digital Da Vinci: Computers in Music is dedicated to polymathic education and interdisciplinary studies in the digital age empowered by computer science. Educators and researchers ought to encourage the new generation of scholars to become as well rounded as a Renaissance man or woman.

Stephen Barrass is a researcher and academic at the University of Canberra where he lectures in Digital Design and Media Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Design. He holds a B.E. in Electrical Engineering from the University of New South Wales (1986) and a Ph.D. titled Auditory Information Design from the Australian National University (1997). He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Fraunhofer Institute for Media Kommunication in Bonn (1998) and Guest Researcher in Sound Design and Perception at IRCAM in Paris (2009).

Tim Barrass has a background in electronic arts practice spanning over 20 years. In his visual and sound work he has explored ways of generating and understanding patterns of interaction in complex systems. He spent many years as a circus musician, developing custom software for electroacoustic instrumental performance in unpredictable circumstances. In recent times his focus has been on developing Mozzi, the sound synthesis library for Arduino. He is currently researching the ergonomics of typing with a cockatiel on each forearm.

Juan Pablo Bello is Associate Professor of Music Technology at New York University, with courtesy appointments at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and NYU's Center for Data Science. In 1998 he received a BEng in Electronics from the Universidad Simon Bolivar in Caracas, Venezuela, and in 2003 he earned a doctorate in Electronic Engineering at Queen Mary, University of London. Juan's expertise is in digital signal processing, computer audition and music information retrieval, topics in which he actively teaches, researches and publishes. His work has been supported by public and private institutions in Venezuela, the UK, and the US, including a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation. He co-founded the Music and Audio Research Lab (MARL), where he leads research on music informatics.

Mattia G. Bergomi is a mathematician, Ph.D. student in Computer Science, and member of the Laboratory of Music and Computer Science (LIM). His research interest lies in the intersection between music and mathematics: On one side the representation of musical objects with instruments borrowed from the Algebraic Topology; on the other side the new analysis methods given by the Computational Algebraic Topology and their interaction with machine learning algorithms.

Simone Castellani is a student in Computer Science at Universita degli Studi di Milano. In his thesis he developed experiments in quantitative and qualitative analysis of perception of the emotional interaction between visual and audio stimuli. His research interests are the analysis of the brain responses to multilayers stimuli and its application in artificial intelligence.

Kai Ton Chau is Associate Professor and the Jack Van Laar Endowed Chair of Music and Worship at Kuyper College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He directs the college choir and ensemble, teaches several music courses and chairs the Arts and Sciences department. His diverse career in Hong Kong, Canada and the United States has afforded him the opportunities to serve at various churches, inter-church events, mass choirs and institutions of higher education (including Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto and Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Canada). Chau earned an Honors diploma in composition at the Hong Kong Baptist University, a Master of Music in choral conducting at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, an MBA from Laurentian University in Ontario, Canada and a doctorate in worship studies from the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies in Orange Park, Florida. He also holds professional designations (CGA, FCCA, CFP) in accounting and financial planning from Canada and the U.K.

Elaine Chew is Professor of Digital Media at Queen Mary University of London. A pianist and operations