Music Visualisation: Benefits

Many benefits are directly associated with music learning in itself, but with funding and interest amongst young people visibly waning, music teaching and learning is in something of a crisis.

To identify the benefits of music visualization in particular, it's helpful to understand what various music learning environments contribute to the learning experience.

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Music Visualisation: The Benefits Cognitive and More

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Sensory Immersion: Nostalgia For Face-To-Face

Long gone are the days when musicians learned from each other in slow play seated around the winter hearth.

The internet has driven a wall of technology between even casual teachers and learners, and we have little choice but to live with it - sacrificing companionship and intimacy to convenience, commerce and self-projection.

This now more or less inescapable intrusion has unleashed an yearning among many for the immediacy, interactivity, emotional transparency and immersion of the original face-to-face experience, but also for the lost authenticity, tranquillity and focus.

Running technological improvements (peer holograms, synthetic pheromones, greater audio depth) will no doubt follow, but replicating the original face-to-face (F2F) experience remains a chimera.

These unspoken, insatiable (and in principle slightly delusional) yearnings will fuel the internet's advance for generations to come. Given there is no real escape any more, how close can we bring teachers and learners together with current means?

Sensory immersion can take the context of the interpersonal, where gesture, mimic and chemistry play a role, and the musical, where audio depth and quality, visual tools and notations are key.

Sensory Immersion
(Inter-Personal & Musical)

Immersion: interpersonal and musical

Interpersonal and musical immersion are not quite the same.

"Eye contact, body language, voice, pheromones and physical contact are not available on [social media]" - Susan Greenfield in "The Internet and 'Mind-Change'".

Clearly she had not included video chat among 'social media'. To a certain degree, it overcomes some of these, but the finer-grained among the triggers we respond to F2F are still lost.

Nostalgia For The Face To Face Experience

Musical immersion is more concerned with the cornerstones of data visualization: information (data) story (concept) goal (function) and visual form (metaphor).

In this sense it is easier for us to approach from a technology perspective, but just because the means exist is no guarantee they are being used.

Scalar vector graphics (SVG) have been around for approaching two decades, yet are still to find truly widespread application in the sense of routinely replacing huge tracts of text.

Using F2F as a yardstick, then, can we track the improvement in our four factors as we move from static (print) media through video, to video streaming with text exchange, to toolset-synchronized video chat?

Gauging this is the aim of the illustration to the right. What it shows, though, is that the emotional triggers are -taken in the context of the whole- not necessarily dominant. Content, presumably, is key.

Realizing a video-chat-synchronized toolset is in itself a significant step, and one that our aggregator platform addresses.

Music Immersion In Online Teaching And Learning: The Opportunities

Setting aside the emotional triggers, and keeping in mind that tools of any kind are barely integrated in any learner environment, for the main learning environment types, we can straight away highlight the main benefits (here using a traffic light color metaphor, neon green being good):

Immediacy / Reactivity By Tool Type (Traffic Light Metaphor)
Showing The Extraordinary Potential Of Source-Driven Music Visualization

Immediacy/ Reactivity	Learning By Ear Slow → Fast (Audio Only)	Book-And-CD (Static Notation & Audio)	Online Video (Audio-Visual)	Score-Synched Online Video (Audio-Visual)	Score-Driven Visualizations (Audio-Visual)
Notation / Tabs	None	Static	None (Or In-Film)	Bitmap	Data-Driven (SVG) Algorithmic Placement Interactive Self-Documenting Transnotation Possible
Theory Tools	None	If At All, Static	None (Or In-Film)	None (Yet)	Freely Exchangeable Fully Score-Synched Data-Driven (SVG) Interactive Self-Documenting
Instrument Models	None	Static	None (Or In-Film)	Dedicated Score-Synched Hard-Coded Bitmap	Freely Exchangeable Fully Score-Synched Data-Driven (SVG) Interactive Self-Documenting
Main Benefit	Authenticity Speed	Contextual Information	Flexibility	Immersion	Tool Diversity Transformability Immediacy + Immersion
Main Challenge	Theoretical Knowledge	Self-Motivation	Interaction	Limited Tools	Provisioning Fingering Diversity

As you can see, there are clear advantages to each of the learning modes, but only one approach revolutionizes learning.

The truly distinguishing tool capability is reactivity, in the sense that SVG is timeline-interactive, transformable and interrogable, and that the product is always graphical.

So what do these look like in practice? Let's try and 'visualize some of these benefits'.

Music Visualization: Some P2P Interworking Benefits Visualized
Environment Asset Propagation Between Remote Users (Teachers & Learners)

What I hope is clear from this diagram is that instead of transferring documents on-by-one and by a variety of means (email, Dropbox, physical prints), only configuration settings are exchanged, and the remote environment populated from them. This simply mirrors the way one's own default environment is established - except it is temporarily 'lent' to another user (but who can, of course, save it for own use).

Having identified tool diversity, immediacy and immersion as key benefits of music visualization, is there anything else? Well of course: we are in what business consultants like to call creative 'flow'..

..and I'm damn sure you can add to the list. Comments truly welcome. :-)

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Platform Benefits

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Comparative Musicology Across All Music Systems Interactively, Dynamically, Immersively	Visualise Relationships Symbolism ↔ Model ↔ Structure (Notation ↔ Instrument ↔ Theory Tool)	Clear Workflows Learning Pathways To Deep Musical Understanding
Diversity Engines Through Animations Factories Notations, Instruments + Theory Tools	Remote Teaching Technology Base Live-streaming, AR & VR	Skills Market Global Virtual Trade In Emotional Intelligence
Research & Integration Framework Universities & Business For AI, AR & VR	Musical Empowerment Post-Singularity Pastime Individualism, Curiosity, Free Time	Synergies Social, Health & Scientific 3rd Party Applications
Prosperity Improved Visibility Wider Audience Thru Virtual Tourism	Academic Performance Better Understanding Deeper Learning	Knock-On Trade Cultural + Historic Insights Instruments, Media, Accessories
Creativity And Innovation Liberated Thinking Networked Thinking	Social Impact Civic Engagement Social Cohesion	Healthcare Wellness, Mindfullness Therapeutic Value
Freedom Of Choice Of Notation Of Supporting Tools	Freedom Of Choice Of Instrument Of Mentor	Freedom Of Choice Of Theory Tool Of Color And Other Prefs

Of course, you could just take a look at the following video :-)

Ajit Singh, Sitar Player

Regarding the lack of interest in music among millennials and the even more recently born, the culprits may in part simply be over-stimulation and (impact of streamed music) poor identification, but with a workless society and considerably more free time in view, this seems likely to change. Boredom is a sensational motivator. :-)

For the meantime, personal contacts and encounters -perhaps forged as a result of wider travel opportunities- drive curiosity and motivation in a way perhaps no longer possible in an era of streamed factory music.

What to do, though, if you have dipped your feet into the ethnic or traditional music of a region, have found your way to a good instrument, but live half a world away from your teacher or mentor?

What if simply an economic migrant for the moment detached from own culture?

What if absorbed with experimental music for which there is little established culture other than the work of a few personal friends?

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Keywords

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online music learning, online music lessons	distance music learning, distance music lessons	remote music lessons, remote music learning
p2p music lessons, p2p music learning	music visualisation music visualization	musical instrument models interactive music instrument models
music theory tools musical theory	p2p music interworking p2p musical interworking	comparative musicology ethnomusicology
world music international music	folk music traditional music	P2P musical interworking, Peer-to-peer musical interworking
WebGL, Web3D, WebVR, WebAR	Virtual Reality, Augmented or Mixed Reality	Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
Scalar Vector Graphics, SVG	3D Cascading Style Sheets, CSS3D	X3Dom, XML3D