Anita’s Status Report for 3/18

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours). 

So after figuring out the high level scoring algorithm, now it is time to actually put it into practice.

I did a quick ramp up on concepts covered in 33-114, Physics of Musical Sound. I  played a bit of piano in the past, but I never really understood how music works in terms of pitch, intervals, scales, and tuning systems. Learning about how frequencies translate to notes, cents, equal temperament, etc. was pretty insightful. Most of my time this week was spent reading articles about this, and peeping at the 33-114 slides.

There were also some mini design decisions I had to make. There are different temperaments I could have chosen from: just intonation, pythagorean tuning, and meantone temperament, but for the sake of ease with calculations, I chose to operate under equal temperament. This is because a semitone stays a constant 100 cents.

However, equal temperament also has some drawbacks. it does not match exactly with any natural harmonic series, and it introduces some dissonance in some intervals. Just intonation, on the other hand, does not have this problem. Ultimately, I prioritized ease of calculation, at least for this first draft.

There were also a bunch of equations I ramped up on, where I later translated these concepts and equations into code. I applied what I learned about the physics of musical sound and wrote a first draft of the scoring algorithm and feedback generation.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule? 

As promised last week, I picked up the pace this week, and I’m still on track! 

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week? 

Depending on Kelly’s progress, I aim to hook this system up to Kelly’s work.