The ExCITe Center is pleased to welcome Tad Shull. Shull is a musician, composer, and researcher deeply involved in jazz music. He will be presenting about jazz and music information retrieval (MIR) at the ExCITe Center on Monday, June 9th at 2pm. This presentation is free and open to the public, so come join us!

Jazz and Music Information Retrieval

Large quantities of jazz recordings are now available and accessible in digital form, and more will come. Yet Music Information Retrieval has just begun to adapt its techniques to jazz and to the special challenges of documenting these improvised musical performances. A project known as J-DISC is exploring the use of MIR techniques in jazz. Signal processing and machine learning techniques can help provide valuable data on many common practices of improvised music, especially in the online space where industry metadata standards are low. A prime goal of J-DISC is to link conventional jazz discographic information with the recordings it describes in the digital space, which has never been practical in the past. Our work is also building the foundations for using MIR tools to help analyze and discuss the musical practices of jazz in any style. J-DISC is a collaboration between the Center for Jazz Studies, the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, the Computer Music Center, the Gabe M. Wiener Music & Arts Library, and the Department of Electrical Engineering, all at Columbia University. It is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Scholarly Communications Program.

Bio

Tad Shull is Program Officer of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University. CJS is a leader in generating and sharing knowledge on jazz and improvisation. Shull specializes in providing access to and organizing the enormous and growing storehouse of information on jazz on the Internet. He is Editor of Jazz Studies Online, which presents resources on jazz in all media for educators, students, and researchers. He is also creator and manager of J-DISC, an online database resource for information about jazz recordings and a forum for jazz researchers to discuss jazz recordings and the legacy of jazz history they contain. Tad Shull is a tenor saxophonist, composer and bandleader with a number of records on Criss-Cross Jazz.

Learn more about Shull's research and works:

Jazz Studies Online

J-DISC Online Jazz Discography

Shull's Official Artist Website