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Music performance by discovering community loops

Gerard Roma, Xavier Serra
Technologies for discovering sounds in large databases can help breaking the boundary between exploration and music performance. In this paper, we present a system for exploring loops from Freesound. Sound files are grouped by their most common repetition periods, so that they can be played in sync. A graph layout algorithm is used to organize sounds in a two-dimensional plane so that loops with similar timbre are spatially close. The result is a system that can be used as a musical instrument: since sounds will always play in sync, the user can freely explore the variety of sounds uploaded by the Freesound community, while continuously producing a rhythmic music stream.
            
@inproceedings{2015_39,
  abstract = {Technologies for discovering sounds in large databases can help breaking the boundary between exploration and music performance. In this paper, we present a system for exploring loops from Freesound. Sound files are grouped by their most common repetition periods, so that they can be played in sync. A graph layout algorithm is used to organize sounds in a two-dimensional plane so that loops with similar timbre are spatially close. The result is a system that can be used as a musical instrument: since sounds will always play in sync, the user can freely explore the variety of sounds uploaded by the Freesound community, while continuously producing a rhythmic music stream.},
  address = {Paris, France},
  author = {Roma, Gerard and Serra, Xavier},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Web Audio Conference},
  editor = {Goldszmidt, Samuel and Schnell, Norbert and Saiz, Victor and Matuszewski, Benjamin},
  month = {January},
  pages = {},
  publisher = {IRCAM},
  series = {WAC '15},
  title = {Music performance by discovering community loops},
  year = {2015},
  ISSN = {2663-5844}
}