IWU Division of Music invites discussion on AI usage in music

On Jan. 17, the Indiana Wesleyan University Music Division invited two doctorate professors to share their research in AI Technology and its effect on string practice and performance.  

Dr. Ka-Wai Yu and Dr. Kristen Yeon-Ji Yun are both esteemed educators in the realms of string instrument performance. The pair presented their research on AI and its uses for string practice and performance.  

Though the current social climate revolving around AI’s uses can be negative, the pair was eager to explain the positives of AI usage. 

The presentation started off by explaining where AI is already used in the music industry such as music generation and music recommendation. 

“Another big thing AI can do is a lot of music recommendations,” Yu said. “Maybe you are listening to Taylor Swift, then (the application) might recommend you listen to the next song that will also be by the same singer or something else related.” 

The two doctors created applications for their research. The three issues the researchers focus on are lack of time, injury and missing musicians at practices.  

The first application is Evaluator, which uses Google’s MediaPipe to track motion and measure performance. 

 “We actually train the machine to recognize all those (technique) problems individually,” Yun said.  

To train the application to distinguish between right and wrong form, video data is uploaded to the machine.  

“I have made (around) 100 videos of actually wrong posture,” Yun said. 

 By showing the machine what is wrong, it can more accurately determine what is right when analyzing one’s performance.  

The two shared demo videos showing how the Evaluator tracks the body while playing the instrument and determines if the form is good or not.  

The researchers are also working on an application called Companion that accompanies musicians, adapting to tempo and learning the scores, so practice is more widely accessible to instrumentalists.  

“If the accompaniment is behind, it will speed up. If the accompaniment is a little bit ahead, it will slow down,” Yun said.  

Companion still has some issues, as it does not adapt to musicians accurately every time, but it is still in the trial stage and improving each month. 

Dr. Ka-Wai Yu is an associate professor at Utah Tech and Dr. Kristen Yeon-Ji Yun is an associate professor at Purdue University. Both Doctors taught at Indiana Wesleyan in the past.  

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