Introducing the Music Access Platform

Music is an ever present component of most people’s lives from the background soundtrack in cafs to the prominence of live stage performances. While composition and appreciation is well understood, its generation and analysis are very human intensive processes. Computer automation in this area is cutting edge research and many promising approaches have been proposed. However, being an academically taxing area, these techniques and their associated utility too often remain inaccessible to those outside the immediate research discipline. The Music Access Platform, a project funded in part by the UK government’s Technology Strategy Board, aims to deliver the fruits of music analysis research to those from other, disparate disciplines including multimedia design, lighting and concert design, choreography and the media. By raising awareness we hope that the platform can effect the leveraging of existing talent and facilitate exciting new possibilities in cross-media performance.