Under construction

The presentation below provides an overview of my research interests. The overarching goal of my research is to develop methodologies to learn about the creative process by examining creative products and to orient these findings within the cultural contexts in which the works are created. This work integrates domain knowledge and skill sets from traditional music-theoretical and musicological approaches, perceptual and behavioural psychology, signal processing, and machine learning.

My work has implications for developing computational models of human performance of music. Specifically, modelling the subtle changes in the human performers’ timing, loudness, pitch, and timbre in combination with the ways in which humans interact when performing together facilitates the development of robotic performers and their integration into ensemble performance contexts. My work can be situated within the digital humanities, with its particular focus on audio creative products in contrast to the current dominance of text-based studies. 

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Current Research Projects

Creative Materials

Developing Representations for Symbolic Music Processing

• Devaney, J. and D. Shanahan. 2014. Evaluating Rule- and Exemplar-Based Computational Approaches to Modeling Harmonic Function in Music Theory Pedagogy. In Proceedings of the 9th Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology. 
• Devaney, J. 2014. Developing a language model and representation of symbolic music data for classification and similarity tasks. Poster presented at the Flow Machines Workshop Creativity and Universality in Language.
• Devaney, J. 2013. Cognitively motivated representations of symbolic music. Paper presented at Cognitively Based Music Informatics Research (CogMIR) seminar.
  
• Funding
  Google Faculty Research Award (2014). Developing a language model and representations of symbolic music data for classification tasks.
  

Practitioners

Experiments on Performance Practice

• Devaney, J. In Press. Evaluating singer consistency and uniqueness in vocal performances. In Proceedings of the 5th Music and Computation in Music conference.
• Devaney, J., J. Hockman, J. Wild, P. Schubert, and I. Fujinaga. 2013. Diatonic semitone tuning in two-part singing. Paper presented at Society for Music Perception and Cognition conference.
• Devaney, J. 2013. A study of intonation tendencies of solo versus ensemble singing. Paper presented at the Performance Studies Network Second International Conference.
• Devaney, J., J. Wild, and I. Fujinaga. 2011 Intonation in solo vocal performance: A study of semitone and whole tone tuning in undergraduate and professional sopranos. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Performance Science. 
• Devaney, J. 2011. An empirical study of the influence of musical context on intonation practices in solo singers and SATB ensembles. Ph. D. Dissertation. McGill University.
• Devaney, J., and D. P. W. Ellis. 2008. An empirical approach to studying intonation tendencies in polyphonic vocal performances. Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies. 2(1-2):141-56.
  
• Funding
  – Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2011–12) Exploring vocal intonation practices in popular and non-western musics.  (Postdoctoral Fellowship)
  – Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture, Programme appui à la recherche-création (2008–11) Les techniques vocales du repertoire microtonale historique adaptées à la pratique moderne. (Student Collaborator)
  

Digitizing the Performance Scores in the Publications from Carl Seashore’s Lab

• Devaney, J. In Press. Recapturing the musical performance data in Seashore’s published performance scores. Musicae Scientiae.
• Devaney, J. 2014. Digitization and analysis of Seashore’s historical music performance scores. Paper presented at the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition.
  
• Funding
  – The Ohio State University, College of Arts and Sciences Larger Grant (2015) “Printed performances: Recovering Carl Seashore’s musical performance data from the 1920s and 1930s” (Principal Investigator)
  

Creative Products

Perceptually-Meaningful Extraction of Performance Data from Recordings

• Automatic Performance and Analysis Toolkit (AMPACT)
• Devaney, J. and D. Richardson. 2015. The influence of sung vowels on pitch perception. Paper to be presented at the Acoustical Society of America meeting.
• Devaney, J. 2014. Estimating onset and offset asynchronies in polyphonic audio-to-score alignment. Journal of New Music Research. 43 (3): 266–75.
• Devaney, J. and D. Wessel. 2013. Pitch perception of time-varying sung tones. Poster presented at Society for Music Perception and Cognition conference.
• Devaney, J., M. I. Mandel, and I. Fujinaga. 2012. A Study of Intonation in Three-Part Singing using the Automatic  Music Performance Analysis and Comparison Toolkit (AMPACT). In Proceedings of the 2012 International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference.
• Devaney, J., M. I. Mandel, and I. Fujinaga. 2011. Characterizing Singing Voice Fundamental Frequency Trajectories. Proceedings of the 2011 Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics.
• Devaney, J., M. I. Mandel, D. P. W. Ellis, and I. Fujinaga. 2010. Automatically extracting performance data from recordings of trained singers. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind & Brain. 21(1–2): 103–36.
• Devaney, J., M. I. Mandel, and D. P. W. Ellis. 2009. Improving MIDI-audio alignment with acoustic features. In Proceedings of the 2009 Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics.
• Devaney, J. and D. P. W. Ellis. 2009. Handing asynchrony in audio-score alignment. In Proceedings of the 2009 International Computer Music Conference.
  
• Funding
  – National Endowment for the Humanities (2015–16) $59,843 (Digital Humanities Start Up Grant)
  – Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2008–11) $105,000 CDN (Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canadian Graduate Scholarship)
  

Audiences

Implications of Performance Analysis for Scholars and Listeners

• Devaney, J. 2014. Applying the work of Bregman, Krumhansl, and Narmour to the study of melodic vocal intonation. Poster presented at BKN25–Milestones in Music Cognition.
• Devaney, J., J. Wild, P. Schubert, and I. Fujinaga. 2010. What can expressive performance studies tell us about the organization of musical materials? Poster presented at the Indiana University Symposium of Research in Music Theory: “This is your brain on music”.
• Devaney, J., and M. Valieres. 2009. Listening through time: Psychological and music theoretical perspectives on the temporal dynamics of musical listening. Special session at Society of Music Theory annual meeting.
• Devaney, J. 2008. The potential of recordings in testing quantitative aspects of music theories. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian University Music Society.
• Devaney, J. 2008. “Tonality’s gravitational pull”: Intonation as an empirical measure of melodic attraction. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Music Theory.
  

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Older Research Projects

Pitch Spelling

• Devaney, J. 2005. Pitch Spelling: Towards a More Holistic Generalized Spelling Algorithm MA Paper. Columbia University.

Music of Elliott Carter

• Devaney, J. 2003. Some elements of structure in Elliott Carter’s Insomnia from A Mirror on Which to Dwell. Ex Tempore. 11(2)

Pedagogical Applications of Music Software

• Devaney, J. 2003. Reasonable Influences: The advantages and obstacles encountered with commercial software. In Proceedings of the 2003 International Computer Music Conference.

Composing in Alternative Temperaments

• Devaney, J. 2003. An algorithmic approach to composing for flexible intonation ensembles. In Proceedings of the 2003 International Computer Music Conference.
• Devaney, J. 2002. Sound Objects: Approaches to Composition in an Object-Oriented Paradigm. MA Thesis. York University.

Current trends in musicological approaches to the music of Monteverdi

• Devaney, J. 2001. Monteverdi, Madrigals and Meaning. Paper for GS/MUSI 6510 3.0 Directed Reading course with Dorothy deVal.

Study of Temperament Notation Systems from the Renaissance to the Present

• Devaney, J. 2002. Notating Temperaments. Paper for GS/MUSI 6530 3.0 Directed Reading course with Michael Coghlan.

Analysis of Modernist elements in the work of Ralph Vaughan Williams

• Devaney, J. 2000. Ralph Vaughan Williams: Modernist? Paper for GS/MUSI 5110 3.0 Early Twentieth-Century Music: Form, Structure, Significance.

Civic Music in Late Renaissance Venice

• Devaney, J. 2000. Music as Propaganda: The Function and Style of Civic Music in Late Renaissance Venice. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian University Music Society.

Digital Re-creations of the Tuning Systems of Nicola Vicentino

• Devaney, J. 1999. Realizing Temperaments. Talk given for the Computer and Music Reading Group, University of Toronto.