Skip to main content
How can the analysis of seismic signals be improved through Music Information Retrieval algorithms? The similarity of musical and seismic signal properties can be exploited during analysis.
Everything that vibrates sounds, even if we can’t hear it with our ears. How would it sound, if we could hear all the seismically generated signals within the Earth?
How can the analysis of Traditional Georgian Vocal Music benefit from seismologically inspired recording techniques? Body vibration recordings allow the separate analysis of individual singers in an ensemble.
How can geographic concepts help to visualize the chord progressions in Traditional Georgian Vocal Music? Graph theory provides powerful tools to investigate the chord progression structure in music.
What can be learned from heartbeat recordings during singing? Heartbeat variability recordings during singing may capture non-verbal interaction of singers.
How can the melodic and harmonic content of a three-voiced song be displayed in a single plot? Harmonygrams is a new concept to represent three-voiced music.
MIR beyond music

The similarity of musical and seismic signal properties can be exploited during analysis. | Photo: Frank Scherbaum

Soundscape Earth

Everything that vibrates sounds, even if we can’t hear it with our ears. | Photo: Frank Scherbaum

Singing and body vibrations

Body vibration recordings allow the separate analysis of individual singers in an ensemble. | Photo: Frank Scherbaum

Chordscapes and song trajectories

Graph theory provides powerful tools to investigate the chord progression structure in music. | Photo: Frank Scherbaum

Beyond Acoustics

Heartbeat variability recordings during singing may capture non-verbal interaction of singers. | Photo: Frank Scherbaum

Harmonygrams

A new concept to represent three-voiced music. | Photo: Frank Scherbaum

One picture is worth a thousand notes

Harmonygrams, a graphical notation system for three-part music, offers a powerful alternative to the western 5-line staff notation, both as a tool for analysis and for singing practice.

Computational Analysis of Traditional Georgian Vocal Music: The GVM Project

Within the GVM project [DFG MU 2686/13-1, SCHE 280/20-1], we apply computational methods from audio signal processing and music information retrieval (MIR) to study traditional Georgian vocal music.

The GVM dataset

In preparation for the GVM project, extensive fieldwork was conducted in Georgia (with focus on Svaneti) to collect a set of multi-media recordings of traditional Georgian vocal music for analysis.

Impressions from the 2019 Achara fieldwork

Impressions From Achara

During the summer of 2019, we conducted field work in Achara and Guria. In addition to lots of new recordings, we came back with unforgettable impressions, some of which we’d like to share here.

Khelkhvavi from Ozurgeti

Singing From Heart to Heart

Together with the ensemble Khelkhvavi from Ozurgeti, we conducted an experiment to monitor the synchronization of the singers' heartbeat rates while they performed the Gurian song Chven Mshvidoba.

GVM-Interface

From Oral Tradition to Online Access

We explore new ways of engaging with traditional Georgian vocal music using computational approaches and web-based interfaces.

Artem Erkomaishvili

The Heritage of Artem Erkomaishvili

The Tbilisi State Conservatory recordings of Artem Erkomaishvili from 1966 are not only a cultural treasure but also an extremely valuable source of information regarding prior performance practice.

Svan funeralsingers in the village of Latali.

Searching For The Sources Of Georgian Polyphony

Because of their roots in very old, possibly pre-christian traditions, Svan funeral songs Zär, can possibly tell us something about the early layers of Georgian musical thinking.

Song Paths In Chordscapes

Representing chords in a song as vertices in a directed graphs allows to illustrate songs as paths in a chordscape to analyse the structure of the music.

New Visual Representations of Field Recordings

Pitch trajectories calculated from larynx microphone recordings pave the way for new representations of traditional Georgian songs.

The Quintina

Real time analysis and display of larynx microphone recordings helps to unravel the mysteries of the Quintina, when the four singers of the Sardinian group Concordu Lussurzesu produce five voices.

Map of recorded body vibrations during singing

Straight From The Larynx

Recordings of body vibration during singing changes ethnomusicological field recording practice. Individual voices can be recorded jointly, but analysed separately.

20 Years Inner Earth

20 Years Inner Earth

The year 2019 is the 20th anniversary of the release of the award winning CD Inner Earth: a seismosonic symphony in which Wolfgang Loos and Frank Scherbaum captured the sound of our home planet.