2016-03-09 status

Done

Data Collection

• Fixed problem with Survey III in Safari. I reinitialized the editor to be empty when NEXT is clicked, and everything seems to work normally. This should help our response rate a lot.
• Validated data entered in abcDE.
• Entered Czerny's recommended fingerings for Prelude 9 and 17 and Fugue 17. Fugue 9 posed too many problems for me to finger from Czerny. Decided to leave it in survey to see if people working from other editions fare better.
• Drafted recruitment email for Survey III.
• Finalized Survey III and asked IB and AFL to review.
• Transcribed 7 of 60 studies from Czery's Opus 821. 
• Fixed several abcDE bugs and warts.
• Dropped computer vision plans for automatic data collector (ADC) in favor of more straightforward electronic approach inspired by suggestion from Alex Demos. Dr. Demos suggested that using the MIDI data and closing a circuit tied to a particular finger should be enough: attach wires to the fingers and foil to the keys and just use finger-to-key contacts as switches. But I think the problem is a little more complicated than that, as having multiple fingers resting on the keys when a note is struck and the timing granularity of MIDI would likely leave us with considerable ambiguity. I think this needs to be handled as a patch-bay circuit, where a specific finger is tied to a specific key at the point of contact just as two parties were connected on an old switchboard.
• Found incredibly informative book explaining a patch-bay circuit using the Arduino and Pure Data (Pd), a graphical programming language I have actually used before. So I have a pretty clear plan in mind for prototyping ADC. It should take more soldering than thinking.
• Ordered about $300 of components and tools needed to build the system.
• Reached out to a EE friend to sanity check my plans. Waiting to hear back. Will reach out to Dr. Zefran if push comes to shove.
• Met with Dr. Demos and discussed my research plans and musical phrasing at some length. He thought WTC was a good corpus choice, and the missing annotation (fill-in-the-blank) problem seemed to resonate with him (as it did with CR). We concluded that we did not need to address phrasing in the WTC data collection, as we can make assumptions about phrasing because of the style of the music. Anyway, we will be leaving this for future work. By the way, he teaches advanced statistics in the Psychology Department. Hail fellow, well met.

Data Analysis

• Analyzed a number of descriptive charts and clarified some methodological matters.

 Doing

1. Discussing each descriptive chart in detail--its purpose, insight (if any). Top priority now because I want to share with subjects, as promised.
2. Transcribing Czerny Opus 821 to use in missing annotation study. 10% done.
3. Determining predictive value of one fingering sequence choice on another--initial Chi Square foray.
4. Calculating mean edit distance as measure of IAA and "influence."
5. Calculating adoption rate as measure of "influence."
6. Performing Chi Square analysis of exploratory dataset to correlate abbreviated Parncutt fingerings with gender, reach, age, Hanon usage, technical practice, preparation actions, injury, etc.
7. Finishing Parncutt algorithm implementation.

Struggling

• What, me worry?

2016-02-24 status

Done

Administrivia

• Completed required "Preventing Discrimination and Sexual Violence Training."
• Determined current plans are consistent with IRB protocol and terms of Provost's Award, which stipulate "funds must be expended substantially in accord with the budget submitted." (So we have some wiggle room.)

Data Collection

• Drafted "monolithic" Qualtrics survey to collect WTC fingering data for 9 P&Fs and to spend $1000 (or less?) in the process.
• Added undo/redo and revert functionality to abcDE.
• Added "tags" button to open modal dialog for metadata entry in abcDE.
• Added support for "copy" and "paste" of complete fingering sequences.
• Downloaded four public domain editions of WTC Book 1 with different editors (Czerny, Busoni, Czerny and Roitzch, and Mugellini) from IMSLP.
• Split preludes from fugues to be more digestible by subjects.
• Entered Czerny's recommended fingerings for seven WTC P&Fs (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 15 and 21) into abcDE, identifying several bugs and warts in the process. The interface does make this a relatively painless process, so I can generate a fair amount of data myself.
• Fixed several bugs and warts. Several remain.
• Decided to implement a MIDI/image capture system independent from future computer vision system. Will prototype in Python and SimpleCV.
• Reached out to a friend and former film major for advice on lighting and cameras, with the idea of assembling a shopping list.

Data Analysis

• Soon, soon. Started typing R code today.

 Doing

1. Determining predictive value of one fingering sequence choice on another--initial Chi Square foray.
2. Drafting recruitment email for Survey III.
3. Calculating mean edit distance as measure of IAA and "influence."
4. Calculating adoption rate as measure of "influence."
5. Testing monolithic Qualtrics survey.
6. Discussing each descriptive chart in detail--its purpose, insight (if any).
7. Performing Chi Square analysis of exploratory dataset to correlate abbreviated Parncutt fingerings with gender, reach, age, Hanon usage, technical practice, preparation actions, injury, etc.
8. Entering Czerny annotations for P&F 9 and 17. The plan is to annotate--and in the process validate--the 10 (minus 1, since the content of Czerny's P&F 8 diverges significantly from OpenWTC) most well-known selections as reported by our survey respondents.

Struggling

• The editor is not working for multiple exercises in Qualtrics using Safari desktop. Fingerings from prior exercises appear in subsequent ones, and prior scores appear "under" current ones. Very strange and very bad for our response rate.
• We have complete Czerny and Hart fingerings, but only partial data for Parncutt. I think we need functioning Parncutt code before we can move forward with last week's proposed study to apply our evaluation method.
• How do we combine mean agreement, mean edit distance, and adoption as a measure of overall "influence" or quality of a model?
• Musing about ambiguity (completeness) in editorial fingering annotations. What questions can we ask our subjects to clarify? What exercises can we pose?

2016-02-10 status

Done

Administrivia

• Pinged Sherice about reimbursement matters.
• Obtained LaTeX template from Rachel and Nick to use for prelim report.
• Filled in some blanks and checked it all into GitHub.

BowTIE

• Created new "pure" Cordova app. 
• Got notation to display.
• Created button graphics and icons.
• Took stab at multitouch implementation.
• Opened issues in GitHub to define next steps for team.

Data Collection

• Outlined follow-up survey for extrinsic "influence" evaluation of Parncutt fragments.

Data Analysis

• Created descriptive statistics report with complete data (191 subjects).

 Doing

1. Calculating mean edit distance as measure of IAA and "influence."
2. Calculating adoption rate as measure of "influence."
3. Discussing each descriptive chart in detail--its purpose, insight (if any).
4. Determine predictive value of one fingering sequence choice on another.
5. Performing Chi Square analysis of exploratory dataset to correlate abbreviated Parncutt fingerings with gender, reach, age, Hanon usage, technical practice, preparation actions, injury, etc.

Struggling

• Must spend money.
• How do we combine mean agreement, mean edit distance, and adoption as a measure of overall "influence" or quality of a model?
• Musing about ambiguity (completeness) in editorial fingering annotations. What questions can we ask our subjects to clarify? What exercises can we pose?

2016-02-03 status

Done

Data Collection

• Moved abcDE editor to new release home on github.io.
• Proved concept (mostly) of integrating new editor into Qualtrics survey.
• Declared abcDE feature complete.
• Wrote end-user and administrator documentation.

Data Analysis

• Created new GitHub repo.
• Played around with Bibtex.
• Drafted some nullable hypotheses.
• Spun wheels.

 Doing

1. Discussing each descriptive chart in detail--its purpose, insight (if any).
2. Determine predictive value of one fingering sequence choice on another.
3. Performing Chi Square analysis of exploratory dataset to correlate abbreviated Parncutt fingerings with gender, reach, age, Hanon usage, technical practice, preparation actions, injury, etc.

Struggling

• New (?) Qualtrics and new abcDE editor are not getting along. 

Czerny uber alles

I think we should develop a corpus of Czerny's published fingerings and use it as an initial source of ground truth. To assist in this effort we will first flesh out the ideas of editorial conventions and full specifications and use these principals to create an MDC5 (abcDE) with partial input and auto-complete features. Then we see how hard it is to annotate WTC.

Then Op. 821 and The Little Pianist.

Null hypotheses

1. There is no correlation between gender and fingering preferences.
2. There is no correlation between hand size and fingering preferences.
3. There is no correlation between scale fingering preferences and fingering preferences of non-scale musical fragments.
4. There is no correlation between fingerings of one Parncutt fragment and another.
5. Editorial fingering suggestions have no effect on fingering preferences.
6. There is no correlation between fingering preferences and Hanon practice.
7. There is no correlation between fingering preferences and technical study practice.
8. There is no correlation between the age of the pianist and fingering preferences.
9. There is no correlation between average pivot count in subject fingerings and fingering "difficulty" (variability).
10. There is no correlation between pitch span within a fragment and fingering "difficulty" (variability).

2016-01-20 status

Done

Data Collection

• Created new feature-rich manual data collection tool (formerly MDC5 but now rechristened abcDE) to allow input of partial fingering information.
• Created detailed help page for same.
• Defined file format, abcD, and implemented its recognition by the new editor.
• Defined abcDF grammar for fingering sequences.
• Created parser for abcDF.
• Defined public interface to abcDE JavaScript library.
• Deployed abcDE to nlp.cs.uic.edu.
• Completed initial descriptive statistics for survey data.
• Wrote script to identify note-wise fingering "consensus" in Survey I data.

 Doing

1. Drafting paper for ISMIR 2016 to describe abcDE.
2. Performing Chi Square analysis of exploratory dataset to correlate abbreviated Parncutt fingerings with gender, reach, age, Hanon usage, technical practice, preparation actions, injury, etc.
3. Looking at how well selecting fingering a in Exercise A predicts selecting fingering b in Exercise B. That is, do people have common patterns of fingering preference?
4. Evaluating Tableau for easier (and richer) data visualization. (SQLite support missing for OS X.)

Struggling

• What? Me worry?