CENG/ELEC/SENG 499 Music
Projects
Supervisor:
Peter Driessen, peter@ece.uvic.ca
PD7 Piano tuning archaeology
Discover how pianos were tuned
for recordings both old and new.
Pianos are tuned using the equal temperament system in which there are
12 equally spaced notes per octave, and the ratio of frequencies
between adjacent notes is the 12th root of 2. In practice, when a real
piano is tuned, the high notes are tuned somewhat sharp (higher in
frequency) than would be predicted from equal temperament tuning. The
project is to develop software that displays the tuning curve, i.e. the
deviation from equal temperament for all 88 notes of the piano
keyboard. This software running on a laptop will be very useful
for piano tuners who may want to tune to particular curves. It
could also be used to perform Piano Tuning Archeology, where it listens
to an old piano recording and determines the piano tuning that was
used. The challenge is to use digital signal processing techniques to
accurately measure the frequency of each note played, especially when
multiple notes are played together. The software will be tested by a
professional piano tuner who tunes the pianos for the UVic School of
Music.
PD8 Spinning Sound Source
(SSS)
Rotating speaker systems such as the Leslie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_speaker) have been used since the
early 1940s to create interesting sounds effects with instruments, in
particular, Hammond organs. The aim of this project is to develop
a sound system involving a pair(s) of small high powered speakers that
can be rotated flexibly in space and driven from musical instruments or
other sources. The rotational speed, and position in space
extends the range of sounds that can be achieved by an instrument while
providing an interesting visual appearance for live performance.
This appears could also be further enhanced with integrated lighting in
the rotating speakers. Power and signals to the speakers could be
delivered over a rotary transformer to for maximum flexibility and
robustness.
PD9 Audio with Kinect
One of the most untapped features of the Microsoft Kinect unit is the
advanced in audio processing as a result of the inclusion of a
four-element microphone array and sophisticated acoustic noise and echo
cancellation processing. It can also perform sound source
localization using beam forming, which enables the determination of a
sound’s spatial location, enhancing reliability when integrated
with the speech recognition. However, the microphones are not
well placed in the Kinect for general use but since they connect via a
single cable, in principle an external connection could be made to a
custom four-element microphone array. This project involves
investigating the microphone-array processing of the Kinect and finding
interesting ways it can be used in applications, for example to measure
the 3D impulse response of a room, record audio in 4-channel surround
and more.
PD10 Omnidirectional dodecahedron loudspeaker
This project is to complete the construction of a
omnidirectional speaker with 12 drivers and
a 12 channel power amplifier.
Radio Drum
This project involves
developing and testing a design for a new
3-dimensional controller that uses low-frequency radio signals to
enable a computer to track a musical performer's motions of two mallets
as he moves them in 3-dimensional space. A computer program then
interprets the trajectories of the mallets to perform whatever function
the musician has programmed. The Drum consists of two parts: a
rectangular surface ("drum") with embedded antennas and two
transmitters embedded in conventional sticks ("mallets"). More details
may be found at http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~peter/radiodrum.html
There are 3 radio drum projects:
PD1 Analog Signal processing
for radio drum
The signals from the interface
are analog; there are a total of 8
signals (4 for each stick). A standard audio interface card will be
used to capture data from the drum but because audio interfaces do not
go down to DC, it will be necessary to amplitude modulate the signal
using the ELEC 350 chopper modulator before it is sampled and
digitized. The project is to design, build and test the analog
modulator and filters.
PD2 Digital signal processing
for radio drum
The 8 channels of sampled data
need to be demodulated in software
and then used to calculate the time-varying position of the two
mallets. The project is to design and implement the necessary
algorithms in C. The software will also need to detect the time
instants when the mallets hit the playing surface and resolve very fine
percussionistic motions such as rolls, bounces, and flams.
PD3 Radio drum pad and
wireless stick design
The radio tracking technique
depends on the electric capacitance
between the radio transmission antenna in the end of each mallet and
the array of receiving antennas in the drum. The wireless stick
prototype transmitters constructed as a previous 499-project need to be
refined, and the receiver antennas and circuitry needs to be designed,
built and tested.
PD4 MIDI Interface
Many older and acoustic
keyboard instruments do not have a MIDI
interface and thus cannot be used to control other synthesizers. This
project will involve the design of a keyboard scanner/MIDI interface to
convert note events on the keyboard to MIDI data.
PD6 MP3 audio coding
This project is to adapt MP3
audio for streaming in real time over
the internet. When the network is congested and packets arrive too late
to be played back in real time, there will be gaps in the received
audio, which will degrade the audio quality. The problem is to find and
implement 'error concealment' algorithms to fill these gaps so that
their effect on the perceived audio quality is minimized. The project
will include reviewing other streaming audio technologies such as
RealAudio, learning how MP3 works, and using MP3 source code from http://www.mpeg.org/MPEG/mp3.html