Canon VIXIA HFR500

There are two of these bad boys in the Piano Lab at UIC. How can we use them?

2015-04-24 status

Done

Administrivia

• Defying all odds, won me one of those Provost's Awards. No word from Graduate College. I wonder about the dollar amount. I think it has to be at least $1K. Amazing.
• Completed end-of-year progress review.
• Moved Didactyl repo to https://github.com/dvdrndlph/didactyl, which will be its permanent home.

Data Collection

• Debugged problem with ornamented notes in MDC.
• Played with new release of ABCJS. The annotations are bigger, don't seem to scale with the rest of the score, and still overwrite note stems and beams. Not much of an upgrade for my purposes.
• Opened issue against ABCJS regarding annotation positioning.
• Emailed various paper authors about sharing training data. One response from Eita Nakamura. Promises to send data in two weeks.
• Per CR's suggestion, contacted Eric Nichols (via email) and Alia Al Kasimi (through Facebook) about the data and heuristic questions used in their paper. Would like to see these questions with a mind toward adapting them for the survey.
• Cloned an orphaned MusicXML JavaScript project known as score-library from the now-defunct Google Code to my GitHub account. If ABC turns out to be too limiting, I might try to resuscitate this project.

Doing

1. Integrating new Manual Data Collector (MDC) into Qualtrics survey.
2. Trying to quantify variability in the Parncutt sight-reading corpus with a mind toward defining statistical approaches, as requested in protocol template.
3. Trying to run finger6 over input file.
4. Playing with Synthesia AFP (one .exe, one .dll, and that's it).
5. Collecting all the Synthesia data there is from their forum.
6. Implementing basic color tracking synchronized with MIDI events.

Struggling

• Motorola is really starting to cramp my style, as cost reduction is on everybody's mind.
• Working on my resume, even applying for a few jobs. Got a bong email from Narrative Science, a startup that grew out of NLP research at Northwestern. My new resume did nothing for them.

2015-04-10 status

Done

Administrivia

• Pinged Daniel Murphy about taking Music 170 (group piano lessons). No reply.
• Formally requested support from Michael J. Anderson, head of the Department of Music. No reply.

Data Collection

• Drafted more survey questions about attitudes toward fingering.
• Improved MDC JavaScript tool to support grand staffs, chords, grace notes, and ornamented notes.
• Made annotation positionings configurable in MDC.

Doing

1. JavaScripting the Manual Data Collector (MDC).
2. Finalizing survey instrument by April 20 (when decision on Provost's Award is due).
3. Contacting prior system developers to request data.
4. Trying to quantify variability in the Parncutt sight-reading corpus with a mind toward defining statistical approaches, as requested in protocol template.
5. Trying to run finger6 over input file.
6. Playing with Synthesia AFP (one .exe, one .dll, and that's it).
7. Collecting all the Synthesia data there is from their forum.
8. Implementing basic color tracking synchronized with MIDI events.

Struggling

• New Scrum process being implemented at work.