World Music's DIVERSITY and Data Visualisation's EXPRESSIVE POWER collide. A galaxy of INTERACTIVE, SCORE-DRIVEN instrument model and theory tool animations is born. Entirely Graphical Toolset Supporting World Music Teaching & Learning Via Video Chat ◦ Paradigm Change ◦ Music Visualization Greenfield ◦ Crowd Funding In Ramp-Up ◦ Please Share

Thursday, March 9, 2017

Cantillate

Music Visualisation: Benefits


Many benefits are directly associated with music learning in itself, but with funding and interest amongst young people visibly waning, music teaching and learning is in something of a crisis.

To identify the benefits of music visualization in particular, it's helpful to understand what various music learning environments contribute to the learning experience.

Big, brave, open-source, non-profit, community-provisioned, cross-cultural and hornet crazy. → Like, share, back-link, pin, tweet and mail. Hashtags? For the crowdfunding: #VisualFutureOfMusic. For the future live platform: #WorldMusicInstrumentsAndTheory. Or simply register as a potential crowdfunder..

Music Visualisation: The Benefits. Brain And More. #VisualFutureOfMusic #WorldMusicInstrumentsAndTheory
Music Visualisation: The Benefits
Cognitive and More

Potential Crowdfunder?



Sensory Immersion: Nostalgia For Face-To-Face

Long gone are the days when musicians learned from each other in slow play seated around the winter hearth.

The internet has driven a wall of technology between even casual teachers and learners, and we have little choice but to live with it - sacrificing companionship and intimacy to convenience, commerce and self-projection.

This now more or less inescapable intrusion has unleashed an yearning among many for the immediacy, interactivity, emotional transparency and immersion of the original face-to-face experience, but also for the lost authenticity, tranquillity and focus.

Running technological improvements (peer holograms, synthetic pheromones, greater audio depth) will no doubt follow, but replicating the original face-to-face (F2F) experience remains a chimera.

These unspoken, insatiable (and in principle slightly delusional) yearnings will fuel the internet's advance for generations to come. Given there is no real escape any more, how close can we bring teachers and learners together with current means?

Sensory immersion can take the context of the interpersonal, where gesture, mimic and chemistry play a role, and the musical, where audio depth and quality, visual tools and notations are key.

Immersion: interpersonal and musical

Interpersonal and musical immersion are not quite the same.

"Eye contact, body language, voice, pheromones and physical contact are not available on [social media]" - Susan Greenfield in "The Internet and 'Mind-Change'".

Clearly she had not included video chat among 'social media'. To a certain degree, it overcomes some of these, but the finer-grained among the triggers we respond to F2F are still lost.

Musical immersion is more concerned with the cornerstones of data visualization: information (data) story (concept) goal (function) and visual form (metaphor).

In this sense it is easier for us to approach from a technology perspective, but just because the means exist is no guarantee they are being used.

Scalar vector graphics (SVG) have been around for approaching two decades, yet are still to find truly widespread application in the sense of routinely replacing huge tracts of text.

Using F2F as a yardstick, then, can we track the improvement in our four factors as we move from static (print) media through video, to video streaming with text exchange, to toolset-synchronized video chat?

Gauging this is the aim of the illustration to the right. What it shows, though, is that the emotional triggers are -taken in the context of the whole- not necessarily dominant. Content, presumably, is key.

Realizing a video-chat-synchronized toolset is in itself a significant step, and one that our aggregator platform addresses.

Music Immersion In Online Teaching And Learning: The Opportunities

Setting aside the emotional triggers, and keeping in mind that tools of any kind are barely integrated in any learner environment, for the main learning environment types, we can straight away highlight the main benefits (here using a traffic light color metaphor, neon green being good):


Immediacy / Reactivity By Tool Type (Traffic Light Metaphor)
Showing The Extraordinary Potential Of Source-Driven Music Visualization
Immediacy/
Reactivity
Learning By Ear
Slow → Fast
(Audio Only)
Book-And-CD
(Static Notation
& Audio)
Online Video
(Audio-Visual)
Score-Synched
Online Video
(Audio-Visual)
Score-Driven
Visualizations
(Audio-Visual)
Notation / Tabs None Static None
(Or In-Film)
Bitmap Data-Driven (SVG)
Algorithmic Placement
Interactive
Self-Documenting
Transnotation Possible
Theory Tools None If At All,
Static
None
(Or In-Film)
None (Yet) Freely Exchangeable
Fully Score-Synched
Data-Driven (SVG)
Interactive
Self-Documenting
Instrument Models None Static None
(Or In-Film)
Dedicated
Score-Synched
Hard-Coded Bitmap
Freely Exchangeable
Fully Score-Synched
Data-Driven (SVG)
Interactive
Self-Documenting
Main Benefit Authenticity
Speed
Contextual Information Flexibility Immersion Tool Diversity
Transformability
Immediacy + Immersion
Main Challenge Theoretical
Knowledge
Self-Motivation Interaction Limited Tools Provisioning
Fingering Diversity

As you can see, there are clear advantages to each of the learning modes, but only one approach revolutionizes learning.

The truly distinguishing tool capability is reactivity, in the sense that SVG is timeline-interactive, transformable and interrogable, and that the product is always graphical.

So what do these look like in practice? Let's try and 'visualize some of these benefits'.


What I hope is clear from this diagram is that instead of transferring documents on-by-one and by a variety of means (email, Dropbox, physical prints), only configuration settings are exchanged, and the remote environment populated from them. This simply mirrors the way one's own default environment is established - except it is temporarily 'lent' to another user (but who can, of course, save it for own use).

Having identified tool diversity, immediacy and immersion as key benefits of music visualization, is there anything else? Well of course: we are in what business consultants like to call creative 'flow'..

..and I'm damn sure you can add to the list. Comments truly welcome. :-)



Platform Benefits



Comparative Musicology
Across All Music Systems
Interactively, Dynamically, Immersively
Visualise Relationships
Symbolism ↔ Model ↔ Structure
(Notation ↔ Instrument ↔ Theory Tool)
Clear Workflows
Learning Pathways
To Deep Musical Understanding
Diversity Engines
Through Animations Factories
Notations, Instruments + Theory Tools
Remote Teaching
Technology Base
Live-streaming, AR & VR
Skills Market
Global Virtual Trade
In Emotional Intelligence
Research & Integration Framework
Universities & Business
For AI, AR & VR
Musical Empowerment
Post-Singularity Pastime Individualism, Curiosity, Free Time
Synergies
Social, Health & Scientific
3rd Party Applications
Prosperity
Improved Visibility
Wider Audience Thru Virtual Tourism
Academic Performance
Better Understanding
Deeper Learning
Knock-On Trade
Cultural + Historic Insights
Instruments, Media, Accessories
Creativity And Innovation
Liberated Thinking
Networked Thinking
Social Impact
Civic Engagement
Social Cohesion
Healthcare
Wellness, Mindfullness
Therapeutic Value
Freedom Of Choice
Of Notation
Of Supporting Tools
Freedom Of Choice
Of Instrument
Of Mentor
Freedom Of Choice
Of Theory Tool
Of Color And Other Prefs



Of course, you could just take a look at the following video :-)



Regarding the lack of interest in music among millennials and the even more recently born, the culprits may in part simply be over-stimulation and (impact of streamed music) poor identification, but with a workless society and considerably more free time in view, this seems likely to change. Boredom is a sensational motivator. :-)

For the meantime, personal contacts and encounters -perhaps forged as a result of wider travel opportunities- drive curiosity and motivation in a way perhaps no longer possible in an era of streamed factory music.

What to do, though, if you have dipped your feet into the ethnic or traditional music of a region, have found your way to a good instrument, but live half a world away from your teacher or mentor?

What if simply an economic migrant for the moment detached from own culture?

What if absorbed with experimental music for which there is little established culture other than the work of a few personal friends?






Keywords



online music learning,
online music lessons
distance music learning,
distance music lessons
remote music lessons,
remote music learning
p2p music lessons,
p2p music learning
music visualisation
music visualization
musical instrument models
interactive music instrument models
music theory tools
musical theory
p2p music interworking
p2p musical interworking
comparative musicology
ethnomusicology
world music
international music
folk music
traditional music
P2P musical interworking,
Peer-to-peer musical interworking
WebGL, Web3D,
WebVR, WebAR
Virtual Reality,
Augmented or Mixed Reality
Artificial Intelligence,
Machine Learning
Scalar Vector Graphics,
SVG
3D Cascading Style Sheets,
CSS3D
X3Dom,
XML3D


Comments, questions and (especially) critique welcome.