August 21, 2013

Over the summer, Dr. Wilder and I [Jamie Leidwinger] have set up camp in Drexel University’s Expressive and Creative Interactive Technologies (ExCITe) Center in Philadelphia to work on the Isomer Project: a digital humanities research project aimed at teaching computers to listen to music sensitively. Our goals for the summer are to develop both quantitative and qualitative aspects to Isomer’s ability to listen and identify descriptors for music. During my first day at the ExCITe Center, Dr. Wilder showed me examples of production music, or music used in advertising. Upon listening to production music on its own for the first time, I was surprised at how formulaic it sounded. Despite appearing musically clichéd, advertising music provides the perfect means to understand how emotion is transmitted in music, because it is designed to elicit specific emotions in order to create associations with a specific product. Although it was entertaining to listen to the differences between tracks, we then began to analyze exactly how this music is able to achieve its desired effect...

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