Towards an intelligent score following system: Handling of mistakes and jumps encountered during piano practicing

Score following has been an important area of research in AI and music since the mid 80's. Various systems were developed, but they were predominantly for providing automated accompaniment to live concert performances, dealing mostly with issues relating to pitch detection and identification of embellished melodies. They have a big potential in the area of education where student performers benefit in practice situations. Current accompaniment systems are not designed to deal with errors that may occur during practising. In this paper we present a system developed to provide accompaniment for students practising at home. First a survey of score following will be given. Then the capabilities of the system will be explained, and the results from the first experiments of the monophonic score following system will be presented.

'What say you to [this] book? Is it yours?'::Oral and Collaborative Narrative Trajectories in the Mediated Writings of Anna Trapnel

This article argues that, when a printed page is initially orally generated and then transcribed, either at the time or on a subsequent occasion by a listener or an interlocutor, there are important critical implications for the “I” of the account. It takes as a case study Anna Trapnel's first published works. Appearing within a few weeks of each other in 1654, The Cry of a Stone and Strange and Wonderful News are both mediated texts, large parts of which depend on the agency of a relater. The article begins by examining the textual traces of the relater, arguing for the centrality of his role and other agencies in the shaping of the works which bear Trapnel's name. Situating itself in relation to a current orientation in feminist autobiographical theory that places emphasis on the external requirement to narrate one's life, rather than on the spontaneous production of autobiography by an inner self, the article emphasizes notions of coaxing, witnessing and intersubjectivity to point up an appreciation of women's life writing as a species of cultural production in which various historical actors—male and female—participate. This dialogic process, which persists into the afterlife of transcription, owes part of its genesis to the political vagaries of 1654 and precipitates two contrasting—but equally “authentic”—versions of Trapnel's life and self. Mapping this movement, discussion concentrates on the ways in which a critical confrontation with women's oral narrative is as much an activity of disentangling as it is of reconstructing, an activity which is revealing of the extent to which a spectrum of social and cultural networks participates in and facilitates the female writing act.

The determinants of knowledge transfer within collaborative new product development projects

Purpose – This paper explores the factors which determine the degree of knowledge transfer in inter-firm new product development projects. We test a theoretical model exploring how inter-firm knowledge transfer is enabled or hindered by a buyer’s learning intent, the degree of supplier protectiveness, inter-firm knowledge ambiguity, and absorptive capacity. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 153 R&D intensive manufacturing firms in the UK automotive, aerospace, pharmaceutical, electrical, chemical, and general manufacturing industries were used to test the framework. Two-step structural equation modeling in AMOS 7.0 was used to analyse the data. Findings – Our results indicate that a buyer’s learning intent increases inter-firm knowledge transfer, but also acts as an incentive for suppliers to protect their knowledge. Such defensive measures increase the degree of inter-firm knowledge ambiguity, encouraging buyer firms to invest in absorptive capacity as a means to interpret supplier knowledge, but also increase the degree of knowledge transfer. Practical implications – Our paper illustrates the effects of focusing on acquisition, rather than accessing, supplier technological knowledge. We show that an overt learning strategy can be detrimental to knowledge transfer between buyer-supplier, as supplier’s react by restricting the flow of information. Organisations are encouraged to consider this dynamic when engaging in multi-organisational new product development projects. Originality/value – This paper examines the dynamics of knowledge transfer within inter-firm NPD projects, showing how transfer is influenced by the buyer firm’s learning intention, supplier’s response, characteristics of the relationship and knowledge to be transferred.

A framework for collaborative working environments

To utilize the advantages of existing and emerging Internet techniques and to meet the demands for a new generation of collaborative working environments, a framework with an upperware–middleware architecture is proposed, which consists of four layers: resource layer, middleware layer, upperware layer and application layer. The upperware contains intelligent agents and plug/play facilities; the former coordinates and controls multiple middleware techniques such as Grid computing, Web-services and mobile agents, while the latter are used for the applications, such as semantic CAD, to plug and loose couple into the system. The method of migrating legacy software using automatic wrapper generation technique is also presented. A prototype mobile environment for collaborative product design is presented to illustrate the utilization of the CWE framework in collaborative design and manufacture.