Research Group

The Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford recently received a donation of an extensive collection of pre-1920 audio recordings and equipment. The collection provides an astonishing audio portrait of the United States one hundred years ago. The goal of this project is to make these materials widely available for educational purposes. The collection is housed at CCRMA.

The collection includes over 1500 pre-1920 cylinder recordings, cylinder players and supporting peripheral equipment and materials. The recordings include classical, popular, folk, spiritual and march music, Vaudeville routines and speeches.

Supported by funds from the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, we are currently in the process of digitizing, cataloging and documenting each recording.

The actual collection can be used as teaching and research materials for classes and individual research at Stanford. The seeds of this project were sown as part of a freshman seminar on Technology and the Arts. The materials are currently being cataloged, researched and transferred by graduate and undergraduate research associates with the goal of making the collection available to all. The cylinders and players are available by arrangement for student, faculty and community use. Student projects using these materials include:

• historical studies of popular American culture, 
• historical research on the music and recording industries, 
• the evolution of popular music, 
• the history of popular dance
• engineering and scientific research on techniques of audio restoration, preservation and archiving.

As the cataloging and research efforts are primarily student projects this on-line museum of historical recordings will be continually developing.

The Music, Computing, and Design (MCD) research group, led by faculty member Ge Wang, conducts research in computer music design, including in (but not exclusive to) the following areas:

• creative design of software systems for computer music (of all types and scales)
• programming languages and interactive environments (e.g., ChucK)
• the social, human aspects of musical expression and computing
• software interfaces / interaction paradigms for composition, performance, and education
• music information retrieval
• computer-mediated performance ensembles (e.g., laptop orchestras; SLOrk)
• mobile music / social music (e.g., mobile phone orchestras, MoPhO, also see Smule)
• aesthetics of designing with technology
• education at the intersection of engineering, art, and humanities

The Music in Virtual Worlds (MvW) research group focuses on the intersections between musical performance/composition and the use of virtual environments as controlling and performative spaces. 

Recent research and performance projects include

Play Your Phone! at the 2010 MiTo Festival, two evenings of performances featuring two new Mixed Reality works built in UDKOSC for piano and virtual performer.  Tele-harmonium by Robert Hamilton and Perkussionista by Juan-Pablo Caceres.

Art direction for both works by Chris Platz and piano by Chryssie Nanou.

Links:

UDKOSC: http://ccrma.stanford.edu/wiki/UDKOSC

MiTo 2010: http://www.mitosettembremusica.it/en/programma/08092010-2200-play-your-p...

Tele-harmonium: http://vimeo.com/15792555

2009 MiTo Festival:

  una serata in sirikata: http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~rob/mito + http://www.sirikata.com

q3osc: http://www.q3osc.org