The paper presents a comparative study of music features derived from audio recordings, i.e. the same music pieces but representing different music genres, excerpts performed by different musicians, and songs performed by a musician, whose style evolved over time. Firstly, the origin and the background of the division of music genres were shortly presented. Then, several objective parameters of an audio signal were recalled that have an easy interpretation in the context of perceptual relevance. Within the study parameter values were extracted from music excerpts, gathered and compared to determine to what extent they are similar within the songs of the same performer or samples representing the same piece.

This paper presents a relationship between Auditory Display (AD) and the domains of music and acoustics. First, some basic notions of the Auditory Display area are shortly outlined. Then, the research trends and system solutions within the fields of music technology, music information retrieval and music recommendation and acoustics that are within the scope of AD are discussed. Finally, an example of AD solution based on gaze tracking that may facilitate music annotation process is shown. The paper concludes with a few remarks about directions for further research in the domains discussed.

In the paper, various approaches to automatic music audio summarization are discussed. The project described in detail, is the realization of a method for extracting a music thumbnail - a fragment of continuous music of a given duration time that is most similar to the entire music piece. The results of subjective assessment of the thumbnail choice are presented, where four parameters have been taken into account: clarity (representation of the essence of the piece of music), conciseness (the motifs are not repeated in the summary), coherence of music structure, and overall quality of summary usefulness.

What is patriotism as opposed to nationalism? And which of these is what sometimes surfaces in contemporary rock music?

The paper presents the key-finding algorithm based on the music signature concept. The proposed music signature is a set of 2-D vectors which can be treated as a compressed form of representation of a musical content in the 2-D space. Each vector represents different pitch class. Its direction is determined by the position of the corresponding major key in the circle of fifths. The length of each vector reflects the multiplicity (i.e. number of occurrences) of the pitch class in a musical piece or its fragment. The paper presents the theoretical background, examples explaining the essence of the idea and the results of the conducted tests which confirm the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for finding the key based on the analysis of the music signature. The developed method was compared with the key-finding algorithms using Krumhansl-Kessler, Temperley and Albrecht-Shanahan profiles. The experiments were performed on the set of Bach preludes, Bach fugues and Chopin preludes.

We talk to Assoc. Prof. Paweł Gancarczyk from the PAS Institute of Art about how early music was perceived at the time when it was being composed, what modern musicologists regard as new discoveries and how our identities are shaped by sound.

In this study, music teachers' exposure to sound was tested by measuring the A-weighted equivalent sound pressure level (SPL), the A-weighted maximum SPL and the C-weighted peak SPL. Measurements were taken prior to and after acoustic treatment in four rooms during classes of trumpet, saxophone, French horn, trombone and percussion instruments. Results showed that acoustic treatment affects the exposure of music teachers to sound. Daily noise exposure levels (LEX, 8 h) for all teachers exceeded a limit of 85 dB while teaching music lessons prior to room treatment. It was found that the LEX, 8 h values ranged from 85.8 to 91.6 dB. The highest A-weighted maximum SPL and C-weighted peak SPL that music teachers were exposed to were observed with percussion instruments (LAmax = 110.4 dB and LCpeak = 138.0 dB). After the treatments, daily noise exposure level decreased by an average of 5.8, 3.2, 3.0, 4.2 and 4.5 dB, respectively, for the classes of trumpet, saxophone, French horn, trombone and drums, and did not exceed 85 dB in any case.

This paper reviews parametric audio coders and discusses novel technologies introduced in a low-complexity, low-power consumption audio decoder and music synthesizer platform developed by the authors. The decoder uses parametric coding scheme based on the MPEG-4 Parametric Audio standard. In order to keep the complexity low, most of the processing is performed in the parametric domain. This parametric processing includes pitch and tempo shifting, volume adjustment, selection of psychoacoustically relevant components for synthesis and stereo image creation. The decoder allows for good quality 44.1 kHz stereo audio streaming at 24 kbps. The synthesizer matches the audio quality of industry-standard sample-based synthesizers while using a twenty times smaller memory footprint soundbank. The presented decoder/synthesizer is designed for low-power mobile platforms and supports music streaming, ringtone synthesis, gaming and remixing applications.

An unpublished Musical by Pirandello: a polysemic and multicultural kaleidoscope – The fact that Pirandello conceived the idea of writing a Musical was well know, but the recent discovery of the actual text and the musical score, in the archive of Guido Torre Gherson, agent of the writer while he lived in Paris, has shed some light on his final years and writings. The findings are discussed in the context of his late theatrical and fictional works, such as I giganti della montagna.

Sound and vibrations are often perceived via the auditory and tactile senses simultaneously, e.g., in a car or train. During a rock concert, the body vibrates with the rhythm of the music. Even in a concert hall or a church, sound can excite vibrations in the ground or seats. These vibrations might not be perceived separately because they integrate with the other sensory modalities into one multi-modal perception.

This paper discusses the relation between sound and vibration for frequencies up to 1 kHz in an opera house and a church. Therefore, the transfer function between sound pressure and acceleration was measured at different exemplary listening positions. A dodecahedron loudspeaker on the stage was used as a sound source. Accelerometers on the ground, seat and arm rest measured the resulting vibrations. It was found that vibrations were excited over a broad frequency range via airborne sound. The transfer function was measured using various sound pressure levels. Thereby, no dependence on level was found. The acceleration level at the seat corresponds approximately to the sound pressure level and is independent of the receiver position. Stronger differences were measured for vibrations on the ground.

The airflow in the mouth of an open and closed flue organ pipe of corresponding geometrical proportions is studied. The phase locked particle image velocimetry with subsequent analysis by the biorthogonal decomposition is employed in order to compare the flow mechanisms and related features. The most significant differences lie in the mean velocity distribution and rapidity of the jet lateral motion. Remarks on the pressure estimation from PIV data and its importance for the aeroacoustic source terms are made and a specific example is discussed.