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MELODIA reaches 5,000 downloads

5/12/2013

The title pretty much says it all - MELODIA, the software implementation of the melody extraction algorithm I developed as part of my PhD research has just been downloaded for the 5000th time.

Rather than redraw a map of download locations, this time I thought it could be interesting to list some of the people (other than myself) using MELODIA for research.

To the best of my knowledge, MELODIA is being (or has been) used in at least:

2 European funded research projects:

PHENICX EC project (contract no. 601166) http://phenicx.upf.edu
CompMusic EC project (ERC-2010-AdG-267583) http://compmusic.upf.edu

5 doctoral theses (not including mine) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain (provisional titles):

Gulati, S. Discovery and characterization of melodic motives in large audio music collections.
Giraldo, S. Computational modeling of emotion, expression and inter- action in music performance.
Bosch, J. J. Melodic and structural analysis of musical audio.
Sentürk, S. Linking fragments of score and audio recordings.
Koduri, G. K. Knowledge-based similarity measures for music.

and 7 Master's theses at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain:

Kroher, N. (2013). The flamenco cante: Automatic characterization of flamenco singing by analyzing audio recordings.
Parra, H. (2013). Study of robust pitch estimation with de-reverberation techniques.
Valero, J. (2013). Measuring similarity of automatically extracted melodic pitch contours for audio-based query by humming of poly- phonic music collections.
Morelli, F. (2013). The bad and the good singer: Query analysis and reformulation for audio to audio query by humming.
Chen, K. (2013). Characterization of pitch intonation in Beijing opera singing.
Gulati, S. (2012). A tonic identification approach for Indian art music.
Rocha, B. (2011). Genre classification based on predominant melodic pitch contours.

Pretty exciting!

On a related matter, I've been thinking of some improvements for version 2.0 based on the feedback I've received from people. But I'll leave the details for a future post.

From Alaska to Cape Town, from Tokyo to Buenos Aires

27/2/2013

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So it seems like the coursera madness is finally starting to subside, and like I promised earlier, it's time to look at some stats!

To date, MELODIA has been downloaded over 3,700 times. For me this is a fantastic outcome and I'm genuinely thrilled that the results of my research are being used by so many people.

But... where?

To get an idea of where MELODIA users come from, I've plotted the (rough) location of each download on a world map. For various technical reasons I've limited the plot to the first 2000 downloads, but I think it still results in a very interesting map:

View MELODIA: first 2000 downloads in a full screen map

Cool huh! I could try to do some sort of geo-based analysis, but I think it's more fun to just let you explore the map yourself. If you want to see it in full screen click here.

I've also generated another version of this map where close data-points are clustered together, which you can access by clicking here.

For those interested in making similar maps of their own, I used the freegeoip API and BatchGeo :)

MELODIA: first 2000 downloads (screenshot)

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World domination with melody extraction

7/2/2013

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When people download MELODIA they are asked to fill in a very short form, where in addition to their name, email and affiliation they are also asked what is their intended use for the plug-in. As the creators of the software this helps us understand the impact it is
having on the research community and other communities such as musicians, educators and students.

Whilst most people are helpful and provide us with candid and insightful information about their intended use, it seems like a small group of people are downloading MELODIA for a completely different reason...
WORLD DOMINATION!

Here's a short list of some of the more sinister goals people intend to achieve with MELODIA:

"Research and conquer the world with music"
"I will destroy the world with this ! HAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!"
"taking over the world"
"The same thing we do every night pinky. Take over the world."
"For the subjugation and exploitation of free people throughout the world"
"Overthrow of the free world"
"kill all the people" (submitted by "emperor of the universe")
"Take over the universe!"

Who knew melody extraction was such a powerful technology?!

I just hope our future emperors have mercy on the guy who wrote the software...

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Coursera is the new Slashdot, MELODIA passes 1200 downloads

30/1/2013

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It seems like I didn't realise the effect that having MELODIA (and other vamp plug-ins) included in the curriculum of a course on digital sound design on coursera.org was going to have... in 2 days, MELODIA has been downloaded over 800 times and the total count is now above 1200!

Not quite the "slashdot effect", but the closest I've ever experienced :)

Beside boosting the download count, I hope this will increase students' interest in melody extraction and help introduce a new generation of artists to MELODIA. I'm sure they'll find ways to exploit it I've never thought of before...

Once the "coursera-burst" is over I'll post again with some interesting download stats and (hopefully) some insights.

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MELODIA included in online sound design course, over 100 downloads in less than 24 hours

28/1/2013

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Today I've come to learn that my MELODIA vamp plug-in, which implements the melody extraction algorithm developed as part of my PhD thesis, has been included in the course material of an online course on digital sound design. More specifically the course includes an introduction to Sonic Visualiser, and as part of this introduction the students are encouraged to experiment with the plug-ins available on the vamp plug-in download page, one of which is MELODIA.

As a result, MELODIA has been downloaded more than 100 times in the last 24 hours, and the overall download count has now surpassed 500!

Whilst it is clear that for some students the plug-in will prove to be more useful than for others, and most probably not all those who've downloaded it will end up using it on a regular basis, this is nonetheless an exciting example of how MELODIA can be used for educational purposes, and of the impact it can have outside the research community.

The next step will be to try and get some feedback on MELODIA from this large group of users, so that we can further understand what people are using it for, when it is useful and when it isn't, and perhaps also get some recommendations and how they would like to see it improved.

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MELODIA passes 200 downloads

21/11/2012

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MELODIA, our melody extraction vamp plug-in reached its 200th download yesterday!

Apart from obviously being excited about the interest in the plug-in, I was also really surprised by the wide range of uses people have found for it.

In addition to the perhaps more expected research purposes (transcription, query-by-humming, computational musicology and ethnomusicology, music similarity, structure analysis, etc.), people have downloaded it for educational use in schools and universities, for music composition (for example for synthesizing natural sounding vibrato by using the pitch curve generated by a real singer, or for vocaloid compositions), for checking out the current state-of-the-art (including some commercial companies...), and even just to "view music in a different way" and "for fun".

So... what next? :)

If you haven't already, you can try out MELODIA for yourself, it's free.

http://mtg.upf.edu/technologies/melodia

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MELODIA now available for OSX, Linux and Windows

26/10/2012

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Today we've announced the new builds of our MELODIA - Melody Extraction vamp plug-in for OSX and Linux! Here is the announcement:

"Dear list,

Following the launch of our MELODIA - Melody Extraction vamp plug-in a few weeks ago, I'm glad to announce we have now added builds for OSX (Universal 32/64-bit) and for Linux (32-bit and 64-bit) in addition to the existing Windows version.

You can download the plug-in (all versions) here: http://mtg.upf.edu/technologies/melodia

Below I've included the text of the original announcement with further information in case you haven't seen it yet.

Cheers,

Justin"

Hopefully this will facilitate the use of MELODIA by the research community which makes extensive use of these platforms (Linux and OSX)!

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MELODIA reaches 5,000 downloads

From Alaska to Cape Town, from Tokyo to Buenos Aires

World domination with melody extraction

Coursera is the new Slashdot, MELODIA passes 1200 downloads

MELODIA included in online sound design course, over 100 downloads in less than 24 hours

MELODIA passes 200 downloads

MELODIA now available for OSX, Linux and Windows

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