Innovation In Music 2015

Special Sessions - Innovation In Music 2015

Innovation in Music is pleased to announce the following special sessions this year:

• Innovation Panel


• Focal Press Mixing & Mastering Panel


• Theremin Bollards Updated


• The iPod Generation — Can the Consumer Download Good Sound?


• Fusing Semantic and Audio Technologies for Intelligent Audio Production and Consumption project (FAST)


• LOLA Network Demonstration

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Innovation Panel

InMusic '15 will feature an panel of keynotes and invited speakers discussing innovation chaired by Paul Crick, Music Industry Lead for IBM Europe


Biography: Paul is an experienced, commercially savvy management consultant with a passion for marketing, music and personal development. He says he also has a soft spot for all things Apple. Paul is currently the Music Industry Lead for IBM Global Business Services, Europe. Paul aids clients within the ecosystem of the global music industry cutting through the noise and helps them learn how to harness data-driven marketing tools & techniques ethically and effectively to drive revenue growth.

Paul is a keen musician and therapist aiding musicians in their performance careers and is also a board member or trustee for a number of musical related organisations nationally.

Focal Press Mixing and Mastering Panel Session

InMusic '15 will feature an panel of mixing and mastering engineers discussing current issues and trends


Chaired by Focal Press author and mastering engineer Russ Hepworth-Sawyer, and joined by David Wrench (InMusic15 Keynote), Simon Gogerly (Grammy award winning mix engineer) Grammy award winning mastering engineers, Mandy Parnell and Bryan Martin, the panel will explore issues of delivery systems, innovation in the market place, online automated mastering and lots more.

Theremin Bollards Updated

InMusic'15 will host a special session as David Young, York St John University, updates delegates on the tremendous progress made by the Theremin Bollards project.

This inludes an update on the technology and business around Theremin Bollards, including discussion of recent commissions for the Natural History Museum, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Science Museum.


Biography: David is an innovator, entrepreneur and part time music production lecturer at York St John University.

The iPod Generation — Can the Consumer Download Good Sound?

After a brief introduction to the psychoacoustic principles exploited by lossy audio compression formats, and the capabilities and limitations imposed by various encoders, Dr. Ian Corbett with display the common artifacts produced by various encoders as audio, RTA, and waveform graph examples. This is proof that what you're listening to is not the same as the engineer intended! Once you learn to identify these specific artifacts, you can't not notice them! After exploring these issues, the presentation will discuss the validity of those lossy codecs, and some current higher quality alternatives available to those who download their musical entertainment.

A 60 minute discussion exploring the artifacts that lossy encoding produces will include discussion on why lossy codecs were necessary, whether they are still necessary, and alternatives that are available.


Biography: Dr. Ian Corbett is the Coordinator of the Audio Engineering Program, and Professor of Music Technology and Audio Recording at Kansas City Kansas Community College. He also owns and operates "off-beat-open-hats - recording and sound reinforcement", specializing in servicing the needs of classical and jazz ensembles in the Kansas City area. Since 2004 he has been a member of the Audio Engineering Society's Education Committee, and has mentored, presented, and served on panels at local, regional, national, and international AES events. Ian authors articles on audio recording related subjects for Sound On Sound ("The Worlds Best Recording Technology Magazine"), and “Mic It!”, a book on mics, mic techniques, and their impact on the mix process was published by Focal Press in 2014. Ian holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Fusing Semantic and Audio Technologies for Intelligent Audio Production and Consumption project (FAST)

A panel session to facilitate and stimulate discussion around the themes and issues arising from the Fusing Semantic and Audio Technologies for Intelligent Audio Production and Consumption project (FAST), a 5 year academic research project funded by the EPSRC, which aims to tackle the following questions:

“How can next generation web technologies (Ontologies, Linked Data and Metadata) combined with music content analysis (particularly derived at source) bring new value and functionality to producers, creators, consumers and intermediaries of music content? How will both ends of this value chain benefit from more engaging interactions (enhanced productivity, increased enjoyment and immersion) while creating or consuming music, and can intermediaries add value with semantically enhanced services? What can other areas of science and ICT learn from end-to-end digitisation and next generation technologies adapted in the music industry?”

FAST background: The advent of recording in the 19th Century made it possible to enjoy music at a time, and in a place, different from the performance. Compression, broadband and the ever increasing capacity to aggregate large collections mean that the issues confronting music consumers have totally changed in nature: equally so for professionals, such as broadcasters (playlists for radio, music for documentaries, etc.) and those at the creative heart of the process: musicians, sound engineers and producers. The recorded music industry has grappled unsuccessfully with digital technology and the rate of adoption of new technologies has been slow, ironically, mostly in fear of piracy and loss of revenue. Given the social and economic importance of music, it is vital that the industry's crisis is averted and its decline reversed. Simple semantics and metadata are already helping (for example in recommendation and sharing services) but this is just the beginning. The next generation semantic technologies that are the focus of the FAST project have the power to exact the turnaround that music (and other content industries) needs but this should be established via a fundamental and principled exploration of how semantic technologies underpin music throughout the value chain.

FAST Vision: The FAST project addresses 3 premises: (i) that Semantic Web technologies should be deployed throughout the content value chain from producer to consumer; (ii) that advanced signal processing should be employed in the content production phases to extract "pure" features of perceptual significance and represent these in standard vocabularies; (iii) that this combination of semantic technologies and content-derived metadata leads to advantages (and new products and services) at many points in the value chain, from recording studio to end-user (listener) devices and applications.

Panel Members include:
Matt White – Director of User Experience, Omnifone
Jon Eades – Project Manager, Abbey Road Studios
Gyorgy Fazekas – Lecturer and Researcher in Semantic Audio, Centre for Digital Music, Queen Mary University of London
Peter Tolmie – Senior Researcher, Ethnography and Human Computer Interaction, The Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham
Gary Bromham – composer, recording / mix engineer, producer and lecturer, who has worked with Bjork, George Michael, Sheryl Crowe and U2 amongst many others
Panel chair: Adrian Hazzard (TBC), Research Associate, The Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham

LOLA Network Demonstration

Many of us use networked audio in our facilities and DAWs are moving us nearer to cloud-based workflows. However, real-time collaboration between cities and countries still eludes us and we lack that sometimes vital eye contact. The LoLa (low-Latency) audio and video system shows us what is possible using high-speed National Research and Education Networks. Dr. Paul Ferguson from Edinburgh Napier University will provide an update on his current research projects using LoLa between Edinburgh, Prague, Italy and Chicago. Paul will show a performance of realtime audio and video between musicians playing together, but sited in both Edinburgh and Cambridge.