CHX Curtis Human Playability IndeX

The CHX Human Playability IndeX is a system designed to help differentiate between composed written music that can only be reproduced via a machine versus music performed by human systems of instrumentation.

Who am I?

Kelly Curtis, MBA, PMP, Pianist, Composer, and Data Wizard

Check out my profile to see links to articles I have written on the subject, and some of the other work I've done.

What and Why?

As we enter the 21st century, computing and telecommunication (ICT) technology has created a world of individualized supercomputing. This has led to a substantial rise in the amount of cost effective and quickly produced published music. Music published using Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) can be purchased cheaply and Music compositions can be produced in bulk. The impact is significant because sound patterns and machine assisted composition techniques that are rarely performed by live musicians become acceptable within the music community. Like Pavlovian dogs, composers and listeners become trained to believe that Music heard via a machine, such as portable Music devices (smartphone, CD players, gaming machines) can be performed live in a similar manner by musicians using the same instruments. This creates a quandary for live music performance.

Now, composers can simply and cheaply mimic the sound of live human performance. Performers can take decades to reach their full potential spending countless hours mastering their instruments to the extent of absolute perfection. This difference becomes problematic for keeping the field of Music Performance alive, and is one of the root causes for pursuing this project.

With Machine Learning being what it is today and my background in computing, I seek to design a system that will help both composers and performers make faster decisions concerning music and playability. The system I seek to design is meant for live human performance, but is capable of expanding and exploring new ideas of finding a harmonious medium between technology and music.

Most of the back end system components required to build this kind of system are already built by myself. This includes a distributed job processing system, chat integration (hipchat), automation framework, etc.

I am but one man, and there are still components that will need to be built:

Website (including eCommerce)

Extensions to the automation platform to analyze the Music in batch

A Data Visualization Dashboard

How?

By digitizing the Music scores into MusicXML, the data becomes a standard format that can be extended. By developing custom data models and processes, patterns within the scope of playability should be become visible in the data. Aggregating the data across the output (at least 20 composer-performers) will provide a baseline to compare new compositions against.

By taking this data and then correlating it together with the Research that has already been done in the field of Music Education for teaching piano and the graded literature, the underlying foundation for generating the CHX score can be calculated.

This number is to represent relative complexity of physical movements required by a given piece, to provide the Performer the ability to properly estimate effort. It may include multiple values.

What?

Starting with the already well vetted and public domain music literature, the pianoforte will be the first instrument to be analyzed and assessed.

Basic Business Plan

Subscription based model with access to content and tools.

Long term and ideally the intent is to host performance competitions and educational experiences.

Brand

The brand for this project will be So Called Classical.

www.socalledclassical.com

Path to First Dollar ($)

Technology product Minimal Marketable Feature set (MMF):

Search the literature for pieces

Compare pieces

Provide data visualizations of Musical data

User and Account Management

Upload MusicXML file to be analyzed

Client: Find educational institution interested in participating in the research and development of product. Cost per student per month.

Project Costs (estimates)

Music Professional Consulting - $10,000

Music Education Consulting - $10,000

Score Acquisition - $5,000

Product Development (Hardware/Software) – $25,000

Total: $50,000

Timeline

1 Year

Q1 – Getting 3 composers output sequenced and transformed for analysis Beethoven Chopin JS Bach A website to display the analysis

– Getting 3 composers output sequenced and transformed for analysis Beethoven Chopin JS Bach A website to display the analysis Q2 – Baseline for CHX number Getting up to 10 composers into the system Mozart Liszt Balakirev Edvard Grieg Schumann Scott Joplin D Scarletti Increased functionality of website

– Baseline for CHX number Getting up to 10 composers into the system Mozart Liszt Balakirev Edvard Grieg Schumann Scott Joplin D Scarletti Increased functionality of website Q3 – Getting up to 20 composers into the system CPE Bach M. Clementi Haydn A Scarletti Handel Daniel Turk Anton Diabelli Johannes Brahms Carl Czerny Carl Maria Von Weber Product refinement and industry validation Marketing Final website

– Getting up to 20 composers into the system CPE Bach M. Clementi Haydn A Scarletti Handel Daniel Turk Anton Diabelli Johannes Brahms Carl Czerny Carl Maria Von Weber Product refinement and industry validation Marketing Final website Q4 – Public kickoff concert Marketing Product stabilization

Thank you!!