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All Outputs (24)

Recording artist career comparison through audio content analysis (2025)
Journal Article
Collins, N. (in press). Recording artist career comparison through audio content analysis. Royal Society Open Science, 12(7), Article 241647. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.241647

Audio content analysis can be deployed to examine relationships within and between collected works of different music artists, allowing a new approach to comparative analysis of recorded music within the domain of computational musicology. Although c... Read More about Recording artist career comparison through audio content analysis.

Composing for AI Voice Model Choir (2025)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Collins, N. (2025, June). Composing for AI Voice Model Choir. Presented at International Computer Music Conference, Boston

The rapid growth of generative AI capability has not left singing voice synthesis and voice transformation untouched. This paper details compositional experiments in the use of AI voice conversion models outside of their normal intended purpose. Deep... Read More about Composing for AI Voice Model Choir.

The Rarity of Musical Audio Signals Within the Space of Possible Audio Generation (2024)
Report
Collins, N. (2024). The Rarity of Musical Audio Signals Within the Space of Possible Audio Generation. None

A white noise signal can access any possible configuration of values, though statistically over many samples tends to a uniform spectral distribution, and is highly unlikely to produce intelligible sound. But how unlikely? The probability that white... Read More about The Rarity of Musical Audio Signals Within the Space of Possible Audio Generation.

Jack Code's Rebellion (2022)
Book Chapter
Collins, N. (2022). Jack Code's Rebellion. In A. Blackwell, E. Cocker, G. Cox, A. McLean, & T. Magnusson (Eds.), Live Coding: A User's Manual (64-65). Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press

OK Computer Analysis: An Audio Corpus Study of Radiohead (2022)
Report
Collins, N. (2022). OK Computer Analysis: An Audio Corpus Study of Radiohead. [No known commissioning body]

The application of music information retrieval techniques in popular music studies has great promise. In the present work, a corpus of Radiohead songs across their career from 1992 to 2017 are subjected to automated audio analysis. We examine finding... Read More about OK Computer Analysis: An Audio Corpus Study of Radiohead.

Composition in the Age of AI (2020)
Journal Article
Collins, N. (online). Composition in the Age of AI. Ideas Sónicas/Sonic Ideas,

This article considers the plight of the contemporary composer, and various options they have to engage with AI beyond simply sticking their head in the sand, from writing software to deliberate subversion of corpora and moving social goalposts. If c... Read More about Composition in the Age of AI.

The Future of Rhythm (2020)
Book Chapter
Collins, N. (2020). The Future of Rhythm. In R. Hartenberger, & R. McClelland (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Rhythm. Cambridge University Press

Sonification of the Riemann Zeta Function (2019)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Collins, N. (2019, June). Sonification of the Riemann Zeta Function. Presented at International Conference on Auditory Display, Newcastle upon Tyne, England

The Riemann zeta function is one of the great wonders of mathematics, with a deep and still not fully solved connection to the prime numbers. It is defined via an infinite sum analogous to Fourier additive synthesis, and can be calculated in various... Read More about Sonification of the Riemann Zeta Function.

A Javascript Musical Machine Listening Library (2019)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Collins, N., & Knotts, S. (2019, September). A Javascript Musical Machine Listening Library. Presented at International Computer Music Conference, New York

More advanced interactive web browser based computer music applications are supported through a new javascript library for musical machine listening, MMLL. The library includes such facilities as beat tracking, pitch tracking, onset detection, major/... Read More about A Javascript Musical Machine Listening Library.

“…there is no reason why it should ever stop”: Large-scale Algorithmic Composition (2018)
Journal Article
Collins, N. (2018). “…there is no reason why it should ever stop”: Large-scale Algorithmic Composition. Journal of Creative Music Systems, 3(1),

This article surveys some new directions in algorithmic composition, with a special focus on the mass scale of content generation now within reach. Interest in algorithmic composition has recently flourished, including a fashion for deep learning, an... Read More about “…there is no reason why it should ever stop”: Large-scale Algorithmic Composition.

A new curated corpus of historical electronic music: Collation, data and research findings (2018)
Journal Article
Collins, N., Manning, P., & Tarsitani, S. (2018). A new curated corpus of historical electronic music: Collation, data and research findings. Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval, 1(1), 34-55. https://doi.org/10.5334/tismir.5

A corpus of 1878 recorded works of historic electronic music from 1950–1999 has been collated. This novel data set empowers chronological study of variation over time, and the answering of research questions based on associated annotated metadata, su... Read More about A new curated corpus of historical electronic music: Collation, data and research findings.

Corposing a History of Electronic Music (2017)
Journal Article
Collins, N. (2017). Corposing a History of Electronic Music. Leonardo music journal, 27, 47-48. https://doi.org/10.1162/lmj_a_01010

A current research project led by the author has collated nearly 2,000 historic electronic music works for the purposes of musicology; nonetheless, this collection is highly amenable to composition. New pieces can be realized by rendering a selected... Read More about Corposing a History of Electronic Music.

Towards Machine Musicians Who Have Listened to More Music Than Us: Audio Database-led Algorithmic Criticism for Automatic Composition and Live Concert Systems (2016)
Journal Article
Collins, N. (2016). Towards Machine Musicians Who Have Listened to More Music Than Us: Audio Database-led Algorithmic Criticism for Automatic Composition and Live Concert Systems. Computers in entertainment, 14(3), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.1145/2967510

Databases of audio can form the basis for new algorithmic critic systems, applying techniques from the growing field of music information retrieval to meta-creation in algorithmic composition and interactive music systems. In this article, case studi... Read More about Towards Machine Musicians Who Have Listened to More Music Than Us: Audio Database-led Algorithmic Criticism for Automatic Composition and Live Concert Systems.

A funny thing happened on the way to the formula: Algorithmic composition for musical theatre (2016)
Journal Article
Collins, N. (2016). A funny thing happened on the way to the formula: Algorithmic composition for musical theatre. Computer Music Journal, 40(3), 41-57. https://doi.org/10.1162/comj_a_00373

Algorithmic composition methods must prove themselves within real-world musical contexts to more firmly solidify their adoption in musical practice. The present project is an automatic composing program trained on a corpus of songs from musical theat... Read More about A funny thing happened on the way to the formula: Algorithmic composition for musical theatre.

Live Coding and Teaching SuperCollider (2016)
Journal Article
Collins, N. (2016). Live Coding and Teaching SuperCollider. Journal of Music, Technology & Education, 9(1), 5-16. https://doi.org/10.1386/jmte.9.1.5_1

SuperCollider (SC) is a highly customizable programming language for music; live coding is the dynamic rewriting of a computer program as a concert or exploratory act. Learning sessions on SC can make ready use of live coding techniques, with many in... Read More about Live Coding and Teaching SuperCollider.

The Ubuweb Electronic Music Corpus: An MIR investigation of a historical database (2015)
Journal Article
Collins, N. (2015). The Ubuweb Electronic Music Corpus: An MIR investigation of a historical database. Organised Sound, 20(1), 122-134. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1355771814000533

A corpus of historical electronic art music is available online from the UbuWeb art resource site. Though the corpus has some flaws in its historical and cultural coverage (not least of which is an over-abundance of male composers), it provides an in... Read More about The Ubuweb Electronic Music Corpus: An MIR investigation of a historical database.