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I followed a circuitous path to this degree, and it would not have been possible without the tremendous support and guidance of the dissertation committee members. Since I met Professor David Wessel, he has been a wonderful friend, colleague, and mentor, as well as a fellow avid music buff. When I left physics in 1994 and was casting about in search of a career, he graciously took me on and introduced me to many exciting new ideas. It was his consistently innovative vision that led to the construction and execution of this interdisciplinary program. As is the case with his direction of the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT), my degree program exemplifies Professor Wessel's extraordinary ability to create novel, nurturing environments for new kinds of research. I am extremely fortunate and grateful to have enjoyed the benefits of his brilliance and generosity.

The fundamental claim of this thesis is that music perception and cognition are embodied activities. This means that they depend crucially on the physical constraints and enablings of our sensorimotor apparatus, and also on the sociocultural environment in which our music-listening and -producing capacities come into being. This claim shows a strong similarity to that of John Blacking (1973), who wrote, "Music is a synthesis of cognitive processes which are present in culture and in the human body: the forms it takes, and the effects it has on people, are generated by the social experiences of human bodies in different cultural environments." (Blacking 1973: 89) I shall present some further evidence in its support, by showing how exemplary rhythms of certain kinds of music may relate to such embodied processes. I shall argue that rhythm perception and production involve a complex, whole-body experience, and that much of the structure found in music incorporates an awareness of the embodied, situated role of the participant. The claim that music perception and cognition are embodied activities also means that they are actively constructed by the listener, rather than passively transferred from performer to listener. In particular, the discernment of entities such as pulse and meter from a given piece of music are not perceptual inevitabilities for any human being, but are strongly dependent on the person s culturally contingent listening strategies. In addition, I argue that certain kinds of rhythmic expression in what I shall call groove-based music are directly related not only to the role of the body in music-making, but also to certain cultural aesthetics that privilege this role.

Any medium through which the music signal passes, whatever its form, can be regarded as a filter. However, we do not usually think of something as a filter unless it can modify the sound in some way.

"Introduction to Digital Filters with Audio Applications'', by Julius O. Smith III, (August 2006 Edition).

This page discusses various practical filter implementations that a musician might use. This includes:

Hardware and hardware emulation

• Graphic Equalizers
• Parametric Equalizers
• Equalizers on Mackie Mixers
• Equalizers on Yamaha Digital Mixers

Filters in Max/MSP/Jitter

• biquad~ and filtergraph~
• cascade~
• peqbank~
• svf~
• reson~
• resonators~
• allpass~
• comb~
• teeth~
• lores~
• onepole~
• buffir~
• fftb~

Filters in Plugins

This page goes into more depth about what actually happens with digital filters. This is going to go over my head (mz), but is worth having around, for reference.

Topics

Time-domain Filters are Delays

An example of averaging a data stream as a simple low pass filter.

Specific filters

• Butterworth filter - no gain ripple in pass band and stop band, slow cutoff
• Chebyshev filter(Type I) - no gain ripple in stop band, moderate cutoff
• Chebyshev filter(Type II) - no gain ripple in pass band, moderate cutoff
• Bessel filter - no group delay ripple, no gain ripple in both bands, slow gain cutoff
• Elliptic filter - gain ripple in pass and stop band, fast cutoff
• Optimum "L" filter
• Gaussian filter - no ripple in response to step function
• Hourglass filter
• Raised-cosine filter

FIR and IIR - what does that mean?

This is where there can be a glossary of filter terms. For instance:

• one-pole
• two-pole
• fir
• iir
• Q factor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_factor)
• z-plane
• etc.

This page should tie into our main bibliography and links pages, listing papers, books, and online resources relivant to the topic.

Parking in front of the garage and in the driveway is reserved for staff.

Additional parking is available on campus lots. ($$)

Street parking is for 2 hours only. Beware the parking enforcement.

Do not block the sidewalk!

CNS Hostmaster Services manages the CNMAT DNS subdomain (*.cnmat.berkeley.edu). Modifications to the DNS zone can be obtained by e-mailing hostmaster@nic.berkeley.edu. If a DNS entry already exists for the IP in question, please specify that you wish to replace the prior entry.

Currently Known Subdomains:

(table of IP allocations)

We will survey sensor types covered include:
resistive, position, inertial, capacitive, RF, ultrasound, magnetic and optical.

Build sensors from fabric

We will explore the major sensor integration systems, e.g., Make Controller Kit, Arduino, and CUI,

How to adapt existing sensors such as the Nintendo Wii controllers.

These are suggested projects to consider working on in the labs.

There is a ridiculous amount of hype again around Jeff Han's reviving of the multitouch display (http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/, http://www.fastcompany.com/video/player.html?bctid=769654555), thanks to popular mechanics swallowing Microsoft's hype: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html

Build a hemispherical dome version of the idea with a fisheye lens. This has better ergonomy for collaborative use of a surface since you are not bent over a coffee table and can have eye to eye contact with other people around the dome and it could be done on a large scale (e.g. at the exploratorium).

Build a better form factor than a coffee table: perhaps one that can be tipped as part of the interaction. There are new LED light based projectors that might make a really compact version possible.
http://www.mitsubishi-presentations.com/products/projectors/PK20.html

General compendium of policy for staff.

The goal of this project is to develop and extend our multichannel audio, gesture and data acquisition platform, RB-2, for LAN and WAN applications. The current generation of this device is connected directly via 100-BaseT crossover cable to laptop and desktop computers.

Printers available in the building, use guidelines, troubleshooting.

This video presentation in three parts gives a concise overview of the research described in this thesis.

A compliation of short goal-oriented tutorials related to CNMAT's Drupal website.