CrestMuse Webpage & Video

CrestMuse (the currently biggest MIR related research project in Japan) launched an English version of their project webpage about a month ago. I believe the best part of the web page is the CrestMuse symposium video. The video has been produced very professionally, offers a nice summary of the many aspects of the project, features a native English female narrator, and it even briefly features myself or at least the back of my head (IIRC). Thus, it is well worth the long wait for the download (250MB Mpeg4). My download window says it will take 5 hours until I the download is complete :-/

One of the impressions I got from Japanese researchers is that they are masters of using videos to communicate their work. Wouldn't it be nice if Omras2 would also create similar videos to communicate their work? :-)
And I guess SIMAC's only flaw was that we didn't have such fancy videos.

Recent PhD

Tetsuro Kitahara completed his PhD in March. The title of his thesis is: "Computational Musical Instrument Recognition and its Application to Content-based Music Information Retrieval" (PDF). It's in English! (It's the first Japanese MIR related thesis written in English which I'm aware of.) He wrote it while working at Okuno's Laboratory at Kyoto University. He has now joined CrestMuse (an English version of the project web page is on its way) as postdoc at Kwansei Gakuin University (Katayose's Laboratory). I saw one of his demonstrations last year and was quite impressed.

(The list of MIR related PhD theses and dissertations has been updated.)

MIR in Japan

Japan is a wonderful place for MIR research. There is a very strong community, they got good funding, and they are moving fast.

The largest Japanese society related to MIR is SIGMUS (special interest group on music and computers). It has got over 400 members interested in topics related to music processing. They organize 5 meetings a year. Around 50-80 participants usually attend these meetings which are held at different cities in Japan.


[Demonstration session at a SIGMUS meeting]

The best known Japanese MIR researcher is Masataka Goto. In the last 10 years Masataka has published on various topics such as beat tracking, chorus detection, and new user interfaces to discover music and organize playlists.


[Masataka's office]

One of the largest MIR related projects in Japan is the CrestMuse project which brings together universities and research labs all over Japan. CrestMuse is funded by the Japanese government (about 2.5 million Euro). It's a 5 year project and started October 2005. CrestMuse is headed by Haruhiro Katayose.

If you want to do MIR research in Japan check out the JSPS fellowships. It's a lot of money, it's flexible, and it's not impossible :-)

European MIR researchers currently working in Japan include Jean-Julien Aucouturier, Bee Suan Ong, Sebastian Streich, and myself. Arthur Flexer just left a few days ago. From the Americas Douglas Turnbull worked two months in Japan last summer. J. Stephen Downie and George Tzanetakis will be stopping by soon.