More PhDs

Hirokazu Kameoka recently completed his PhD thesis on “Statistical Approach to Multipitch Analysis” (PDF) at the University of Tokyo. Hirokazu is now working at NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Media Information Laboratory.

It’s great to see another thesis written in English emerge from Japan. Btw, so far 5 out of 10 who completed their MIR related PhD thesis this year are now living and working in Japan.

In addition, it seems that Don Byrd and Tim Crawford have pointed me to the very first PhD thesis mentioning MIR in the title. It dates back to 1988!

[Email from Tim on 11 June 2007]

Don and Elias,

I have the thesis in front of me:

Stephen Dowland Page, 'Computer Tools for Music Information Retrieval', thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Oxford, New College, 1988. 252 pp. (Available from the Bodleian Library, Oxford.)

Basically it describes a simple encoding, matching and query specification method for monophonic symbolic searching, which uses a query language based on regular expressions. He never got as far as polyphonic queries, though he had hoped to do so (no surprise there!). The introductory chapters, on the nature of the problem and on previous work, are - I would say - still of value, although the methods he describes would need a lot of work to make them useful for polyphonic music. Full code for the search engine is given (in Modula 2!). The ~40-page bibliography is useful for listing a lot of early work - though a vague reference to "Kassler's series of radio talks on the subject" is frustrating, since he gives no further details!

NB, for Don:
There is a sheet at the beginning of my copy listing copies supplied up to the day I ordered it from the Bodleian Library. Second on the list is Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington, IN 47405: 20 June 1989. (My copy was supplied on 10th January 1991.)

Tim


(The list of MIR related PhDs has been updated.)