Perfecto Herrera Boyer
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MIRages: an account of music audio extractors, semantic description and context-awareness, in the three ages of MIR Perfecto Herrera Boyer TESI DOCTORAL UPF / ANY 2018 DIRECTORS DE LA TESI Dr. Xavier Serra i Casals Dra. Emilia Gómez Gutiérrez DEPARTAMENT DE TECNOLOGIES DE LA INFORMACIÓ I LES COMUNICACIONS Fortitudine Vincimus (by endurance we conquer) Family motto of the British polar explorer Ernest Shackleton Acknowledgements Thanks To my late and mournfully missed parents, They gave me the song, the word and the number They encouraged my curiosity and perseverance They showed me the way. And by endurance we all conquered. To my dearest, sweetest, and cheerful Eulalia. This thesis brought boredom, sadness and distress to her life. There will not be enough time or love from me to pay off for all that. I cannot conceive a way or a moment when she will be rewarded for what she was stolen during this long and horrid journey by my side. I wish she smiles when seeing this task successfully finished. By endurance, she will conquer. It has been a long time since I phoned Xavier Serra to ask him for me to be accepted in a computer music course he was about to teach in the Phonos Foundation in Barcelona. His name sounded familiar to me from some Computer Music Journal I, by chance, browsed some months before in the library of the only public place in the pre-Olympic Barcelona where you could listen to and borrow electronic and computer music recordings. By chance, too, I had read about that course in a local classical music magazine that I had never browsed before. My guts were telling me that I could not miss it, and they were right, as usual: it changed my life for good and forever. It was 1992 and, since then, Xavier and I have shared many events, conditions, projects, meetings and journeys and I have never regretted of that: working and enjoying it at the same time is priceless, and he gave me the opportunity to achieve that. Being part of the MTG since its very beginning has been an honour and a permanent challenge. I am also grateful to him for the lessons he (on purpose or unwittingly) taught me about technical, scientific, musical and management issues. I would wish not having betrayed the trust he put on me, and I hope this thesis helps him to feel relieved about me and about his academic duties. We have shared a long intellectual journey that I would not like to end here. He deserves my earnest, genuine and permanent gratitude and admiration. What he has achieved with the MTG was unbelievable twenty-five years ago, considering we live in a country with so many rude, ignorant, unscientific and music-insensitive people. Emilia Gómez provided the right tonality to many years of research. In our shared projects, she always held the metronome, the compass and the timetable and helped me to keep many things in order, on the right track, and on time. Her enthusiastic support, collaborative attitude and rigor are outstanding, and I could not have been luckier and, at the same time, more indebted with such a proactive and tireless long-term research partner and, in the recent years, thesis supervisor. I also owe her the idea of trying again to set up this manuscript and the final push for reaching a happy end along that path. A master on hitting the right chords, indeed. Many colleagues have been valuable sources of knowledge, critical thought, enlightenment, fun and encouragement (different linear combinations apply here). Working with them has been a pleasure and an occasion for intellectual and personal growth. Sergi Jordà has been a long-time partner in many adventures, long before the v ages of MIR. We have shared and debated about music, art, science, lifestyles, scents, politics, hobbies… Even though our projects, skills and interests were rarely convergent during many years I am very grateful he rescued me from a personal and professional black hole for the GiantSteps project. I appreciate his sincere critical and bold perspectives, his enthusiasm and will to act, to make, to change the world. He helps me to overcome my slow, stratospheric way of thinking to go down to earth quickly, where practical problems and real users must be promptly faced. I think we make an interesting, complementary yin-yang duet (probably better when doing research than when hitting our synths and noisy devices). Improvising, wandering about, or following straight paths with him (depending on the task, mood or deadline) has been a rewarding and game- changing experience. Joan Serrà was instrumental for getting a former thesis draft that never was concluded but helped to frame the current one. He played, without any reward, the role of “bad cop” during many months and showed infinite patience with my frequent delays on our agreed deadlines. He pushed me gently to the edge, making me feel that the task of my thesis had a sense, a purpose and a possible direction (even when, afterwards, that initiative was ground to a halt). Just because of that, my debt towards him is immense. Versions of us even explored amazing territories beyond our original areas of expertise, and complex networks never were the same after that. In all those activities he provided to me excellent examples of rigor, systematicity and forward-thinking. From time to time I wish many of my supervised students would be versions of him. Oscar Celma was not a FOAF, but he was a master of many trades, a native explorer and a proficient provider of workable solutions to almost everything. Without his hacking zest and semantic awareness, nothing about contextual issues could have been addressed the same way. I hope he can keep the Pandora box tightly closed for many years. Fabien Gouyon layered the early rhythms of my research and showed me the way to be systematic, open-minded and multi-disciplinary. His vibrant intellectual pulse kept many challenges active in my research life, and I thank him the activities in which, from time to time, he has proposed me to tick along. Geoffroy Peeters was another early and essential influence. The many occasions, days and kilometres travelled together gave me the chance to learn about signal processing, methodology and music retrieval from a true visionary. I wish we would have had more time to indulge into conversing about music and life issues with a beer on the table. Even though I would like to write long sentences to express gratitude to most of my former and current collaborators, I will refrain from doing that, as I would need several pages (they are nearly a hundred!). The following list includes not only direct collaborators but also MTG colleagues with whom I have enjoyed many sparkling or boring discussions, lunch or coffee time, accepted or rejected project proposals and papers, exciting or useless committees, project meetings or informal meetings. They are (my apologies if I missed somebody): Vincent Akkermans, Xavier Amatriain, Josep Lluís Arcos, Pau Arumí, Jean Julien Aucouturier, Thomas Aussenac, Eduard Aylon, Giuseppe Bandiera, Eloi Batlle, Juan Pablo Bello, Martin Blech, Dmitry Bogdanov, Jordi Bonada, Juanjo Bosch, Paul Brossier, Pedro Cano, Rafael Caro, Álvaro Corral, Manuel Davy, Marteen deBoer, Amaury Dehamel, Sue Denham, Simon Dixon, Shlomo Dubnov, Ángel Faraldo, Frederic Font, Ferdinand Fuhrmann, Chen Gang, David García, José-Pedro García, David García, Daniel Gómez, Mastaka Goto, Marteen Grachten, Jens Grivolla, Sankalp Gulati, Martín Haro, Amaury Hazan, Martin Hermant, Piotr Holonowicz, Henkjan Honing, Leonidas Ioannidis, Jordi Janer, Stefan Kersten, Peter Knees, Stefan vi Koelsch, Markus Koppenberger, Cyril Laurier, Sylvain Le Groux, Ramón López de Mántaras, Alex Loscos, Marco Marchini, Agustín Martorell, Ricard Marxer, Jordi Massaguer, Jaume Massip, Óscar Mayor, Owen Meyers, Felipe Navarro, Javier Nistal, Waldo Nogueira, Cárthach Ó Nuanáin, Bee-Suan Ong, François Pachet, Elias Pampalk, Panos Papiotis, Alfonso Pérez, Gilles Petterschmitt, António Sá Pinto, Alaister Porter, Hendrik Purwins, Miquel Ramirez, Rafael Ramírez, Zuriñe Resa, Julien Ricard, Martín Rocamora, Gerard Roma, Carlos Román, Justin Salamon, Inês Salselas, Mark Sandler, Vegard Sandvold, Àlvaro Sarasúa, Markus Schedl, Mattia Schirosa, Leigh Smith, Mohamed Sordo, Sebastian Streich, Sergio Toral, Julián Urbano, Hughes Vinet, Nicolas Wack, Gerhard Widmer, Istvan Winkler, Anna Xambó, Yi-Hsuan Yang, Alex Yeterian, Massimiliano Zanin and José Zapata. In addition to their nice work, they contributed to create the friendly and inspiring intellectual environment in which my work matured. I hope to have given to them, at least, as much as I got from them. Many students in the Sound and Music Computing Master and in the Sonology degree (and colleagues in the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya) should also be credited for challenging my views, for posing the right questions that raised my awareness of what I didn’t know (and I don’t know yet) or for encouraging me to keep on the track (or the opposite way). I also felt lucky of having at hand the wisdom and extensive experience of Gabriel Brncic and Andrés Lewin, who provided, in many occasions, music, technology, and personal life lessons, in addition to encouragement to pursue my career and finish this thesis. Administrative and research support people as Cristina Garrido Lydia García, Joana Clotet, José Lozano, Sonia Espí, Ramón, Loureiro, Salvador Gurrera, Rosa Borràs, Alba Rosado and Carlos Atance, made the MTG and the UPF an efficient, friendly and well-organized place (as I have been told by many people, like no other working environment in the world -though I miss a lot our former HQ in Ocata-Estació de França!-). Insights and experiences far from the academic field were possible from my years of professional practice in sound recording, reinforcement and mixing.