An Easier Navigation Through Musical Files

Austrian researchers are in development of software which is able to organize music into landscapes. A particular type of music will have its own "island", and users will simply "fly" over the landscapes and choose the appropriate song, artist or music genre.

When downloading music, the main issue of users remains finding the appropriate song or genre. It takes time to look through and open a lot of folders till one finds what is perfect for the mood. Another thing to be mentioned here is the organization of the downloaded songs: the artist, album or track.

Several researchers tried to solve this problem by developing a unique program that is able to automatically organize all the downloaded songs into a virtual landscape. There will be no need to open various folders till one finds the appropriate category – the program analyses the peculiarities of every song and then builds up an archipelago where there's water, grass and mountains. The user simply flies over the islands of the archipelago and chooses the favorite type of song or artist.

Peter Knees is a PhD candidate, who works as a project assistant in an Austrian university. Making his analysis within the walls of Johannes Kepler University, located in Linz, Knees outlined that the landmarks that the program creates refer to the style of music and as one dives deeper, the landscape will display the artists and digging further there will be individual songs.

This digital program can contribute to sales of more audio files. Together with his team Knees offers a solution that organizes around 500 audio files. Surely the team could try to organize a lot more but for some particular reasons the research and development team try to analyze everything on a micro level – keeping everything simple.

The program that creates the landscapes takes into account specific features of an audio signal as well as sound patterns. The audio signals could be the amount of bass in the audio file or its treble exits. The sound patterns deals with such things like tempo and rhythm. The files that sound similar the software groups into regions.

For example the more of Latin Jazz music one has downloaded the higher will be the area of the "Latin Jazz Island". The use of the software is similar to a simulator of flights. The one using the program flies over the "musical islands" with the help of a joystick. When approaching a particular island the user will hear the sounds of the region's style of music.

There will also be displayed the names of the artists, songs. You will also be able to see the pictures flying over the island looking like small clouds. If you want to listen to a particular song then all you have to do is hover over it. If you are willing to listen to everything that is related, let's say to Latin Jazz, then you hover over the whole island or region. The software is currently in development and is further to be displayed in the science museum of Austria.


Source: Discovery.com

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