Section: New Software and Platforms

Rhythm Quantization in Open Music

Participants : Adrien Ycart, Florent Jacquemard, Jean Bresson.

We are developing a new system for rhythm transcription, which is the conversion of sequences of timestamped discrete events into common-western music notation. The input events may e.g. come from a performance on a MIDI keyboard or may also be the result of a computation. Our system privileges the user interactions in order to search for a satisfying balances between different criteria, in particular the precision of the transcription and the readability of the music score in outcome. It is integrated in the graphical environment for computer assisted music composition OpenMusic, and and will be released publicly as a library of this system on the the Ircam's Forum.

We have developed a uniform approach for transcription, based on hierarchical representations of notation of duration as rhythm trees, and efficient algorithms for the lazy enumeration of solutions. It has been implemented via a dedicated interface making it possible the interactive exploration of the space of solutions, their visualization and their edition, with a particular focus on the processing of grace-notes and rests.

Figure 7. Rhythm Quantization in Open Music