CS Seminar Explores AI and Music

Computer Science Newsroom -

This seminar will introduce how AI-embedded tools can be beneficial to improve individual practice and performance for string professionals and students, offering insights from a professional musician. The requisite technologies for this integration encompass score digitization and processing, audio input measurement and comparison to score, dynamic estimation, and tempo/downbeat estimation, posture detection for hands and body, and bow/instruments detection. AI can also recognize compositional style and period (e.g. Baroque, Classical) of the music played in real-time. It can generate relevant images and videos based on the musical genres and compositional style it detects. The purpose of technological development is to solve those two research questions:

  • When can AI technology provide measurable benefits to professional musicians' practice and performance?
  • What factors would affect future musicians' acceptance of AI technology in their work?

Kristen Yeon-Ji Yun is a clinical associate professor in the Department of Music in the Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Design, Art, and Performance at Purdue University. She is active as a soloist, chamber musician, musical scholar, and clinician. Her CD “Summerland” has excellent reviews from New Classics UK, American Record Guide, and was broadcast nationwide. Dr. Yun is a winner in numerous competitions around the world and has been giving a series of successful concerts and master classes internationally. Her dynamic career includes receiving a grant as a principal investigator from the National Science Foundation for the project "Artificial Intelligence Technology for Future Music Performers." Her research team explores various applications of AI in music, including Automatic Music Transcription, the Robot Cello, and MUS2VID. She received the Doctor of Music on cello performance in 2012 from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music at Bloomington, where she studied with the world-famous cellist Janos Starker. She received master’s and bachelor’s degrees in cello performance from Seoul National University.