Research interests

My main research focus is music cognition particularly the modelling of melodic cognition with mathematical and comptutational methods. Closely related is my interest in statistical features of melodies which connects me also to (computational) music ethnology. Likewise, the biological and neurological fundaments of music cognition as a basis for this all are of central concern. However, music is a social phenomenon and can not be understood without an understanding of the social and cultural backgrounds and practices. This amounts at the end to anthropological and evolutional aspects of music. Another focus lies on creative processes in music production with special regard to jazz improvisation and pop song writing.

Projects

• Meloworks - an online platform for statistical and mathematical analysis of monophonic melodies with a special focus on e-learning (alpha version). Incorporates most of the Essen Folk Song Collection. Supported by a grant "Seminare ans Netz" from the University of Hamburg
• Creative Karaoke - research in the creative processes of pop song writing and plagiarism. Together with Frank Riedemann (HfMT, Hamburg). (paper)
• Jazzomat - research in the creative processes underlying jazz improvisation employing mostly statistical methods. Together with Prof. Dr. Martin Pfleiderer (HfMT, Weimar). (paper)

Software

I developed several programs (using C++), mostly in the field of computational musicology especially for melody cognition. Some of them will be made publicly available soon.

• SIMILE - pxrogram for similarity assessment of melodies
• MELFEATURE - program for calculation of various melodic features
• MELCONV - program for converting to an from several symbolic melodic formats (CSV, MIDI, EsAC)
• MELEX - Web site for analysis of monophonic melodies (JavaScript)
• BEAT-O-METER - program for beat and meter estimation from monophonic rhythms (quantized and unquantized)