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By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek Tue Apr 1, 6:20 PM ET

University of Rochester researchers on Tuesday said they have come up with a way to reproduce music into a computer file that's 1,000 times smaller than a comparable high-quality MP3 file.

The researchers demonstrated their methods by encoding a 20-second clarinet solo in less than a single kilobyte.

The technique involved isn't an audio recording technology; rather, it re-creates the clarinet solo in the same way that a player piano re-creates a piano piece from a roll of punched paper. But in addition to re-creating the notes, it also re-creates the way in which the player played the notes.

Mark Bocko, professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-creator of the technology, suggests that perhaps the future of music performance lies in reproducing performers rather than recording them.

Bocko and doctoral students Xiaoxiao Dong and Mark Sterling programmed a computer to model clarinet fingering, breath pressure, and lip pressure and to use that information to affect the sound described by their model of a virtual clarinet. Postdoctoral researcher Gordana Velikic and Dave Headlam, a professor of music theory at the University of Rochester, also contributed to the research.

By using its programmed knowledge of clarinets and clarinet players, Bocko's approach avoids having to sample music thousands of times a second, which generates a lot of data and makes music files large.

Bocko expects that his team's work will lead to more expressive electronic and computer-generated music. He also anticipates that the technology could be extended to generate vocals and voices more naturally.

The technique isn't perfect yet, but Bocko expects his music synthesis algorithms will become more accurate.

See">http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207001130">See original article on InformationWeek.com

No.

The only possible purpose of this can
be to make it easier to steal music.
It must be killed .. now.

( watch it happen )

And I'll predict one day this type of technology will have hackers be able to use voice sampling from vocals of a famous singer to re-create a complete version of a different song that the singer never sang. Is anyone ready for Elvis' version of "Oops, I Did It Again?"
(Scratch that; the hackers likely would have better taste than that . . . er, wouldn't they?)

I should give them more credit than that; I'm sure we'd all be overjoyed to hear "Mmmbop", instead.

(Just think of the possibilities . . . hmm.)

Worst case scenario: Someone perfects this tool for the RIAA to use in making previous studio recordings enhanced and ambienced to sound as if the singers are just a few feet away doing a special live performance for you, enabling you to hear subtle intonation and even the breaths they take, etc.; plus the musical instruments might be improved, as well ("re-creating the way the artist played the notes", as the article says.

Then, all the big labels can figure out how much to charge for these super-reproductions which a lot of people might well be interested in.
After all, you just knew they wanted us to purchase "The White Album" all over again, anyway!

First impression --

...a computer file that's 1,000 times smaller than a comparable high-quality MP3 file... probably sounds like a flock of mosquitos.

The technique involved isn't an audio recording technology... thus ending any possible comparison to a high-quality mp3 file.

i agree with the above statment...this is not so much audio recording technology but a new breed of synthesis and therin lies pretty exciting possibilities for syntheads

only thing i can think of how this might work is that the program required to play this has a huge catalog of sounds and the music file tells it when to play what sounds and for how long

That's what I wondered... 1KB for the actual data file is cool but how big is the clarinet synth file? I seriously doubt it was all self-contained in a file that small... Sounds to me like an updated MIDI file.

Mojosnake said:

"a new breed of synthesis"

I concur.

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from the scant info from the article, it said it didn't RECORD the actual sound.

It said it (in an analog way) REPLACED the sound with only instructions on what sound wave form to play-back.

"Piano Roll" was used as the example.

------------------

Theyz punchin holz in ur audio tapez.

what I'm wondering is if these files contain no music, only instructions and you copy it and give it to someone else how can it be construed as copyright infringement and if they are copyrighting the instruction aren't some songs going to have the same instructions in some parts regardless of who who owns it and if that is the case how can it be copyrighted at all.

someone explain where i am right and where i might be wrong about that.

"how can it be construed as copyright infringement and if they are copyrighting "

It couldn't...

BUT laws change and adapt to help those who have POWER...

...so, EXPECT it to happen EVEN with this.

It can be contrued as copyright infringement if it plays copyrighted songs and you don't pay the 9 cents for every copy of every song.

Just like a piano roll. Or sheet music.

By using its programmed knowledge of clarinets and clarinet players...

...that they've heard so far.

Imagine if you put something like this together for saxophone and put it on the market -- the day before Charlie Parker showed up.

Therein lies the inherent flaw.

I think that this was invented before and called MIDI. Hey, I have an idea, let's recycle the idea of a milkshake and call it a frappachino (oh, someone did that).

The article label is confusing users. They are comparing apples and oranges. An mp3 actually contains audio data, these files seem to be nothing more than glorified, okay, load this wav, play at this bitrate like this, and stop... scripts or plain jane, super MIDI or something similiar...

atleast .MOD files actually contained a copy of the instrument they wanted to play.

FLIPPANCY ALERT:

Making the size smaller?
Just omit all "the"s, "of"s, and the ever popular phrases like "know what I mean", "Oh yeah", "uh huh", "she said", and if it's thug rap....
omit "pimpin'","hoes","cap","ass"...

course, one you shave those, not much there....oh yes, cut all C sharp notes....that'll shrink ya