MUSIC INFORMATION RETRIEVAL BASED DATA INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ETHNOGRAPHIC SOUND RECORDINGS ARCHIVES

基于汉堡大学音乐学研究所在过去十年中进行的原创研究，将开发一种基于内容的数据库基础设施方案，用于数字化历史人种学记录，围绕数据提取功能而构建，使用由专门启发式指导的信号处理操作员。因此，拟议的项目解决了音乐档案、系统音乐学和民族音乐学的核心需求，即通过使用直接从音频信号获得的公共且一致的参数集，以上下文和语义集成的方式提供对大型数字音频数据储存库的计算机化访问，从而允许对给定数据库内的音频数据以及类似数据库之间的音频数据进行确凿的核对。这是一项基础性研究，在涉及唱片音乐和声音的保存和科学研究的广泛应用中具有许多实际实施的可能性。这一基于和平号的分类方案将在对研究所拥有的大量历史人种学记录的数字副本进行系统分类的过程中进一步实施。目前正在建立一个专门的数字数据库--汉堡大学民族志录音档案(ESRA)，其中包含这样的数据，从而为实际执行上文提出的项目的核心要求提供了一个理想的开发和测试环境。许多口头传播的音乐传统在全球文化变化的影响下正在迅速消亡，其他的已经灭绝了，剩下的只有隐藏在民族音乐档案书架上的历史录音。科学界的一项紧迫任务是以数字方式保存，并提供足够的途径，至少这些曾经活着的音乐文化的微弱痕迹，以免随着原始记录媒体的物理解体而被遗忘，永远消失。

Based on original research performed over the course of the past decade at the Institute of Musicology, University of Hamburg, a content-based database infrastructure scheme for digitized historic ethnographic recordings is to be developed, build around data extraction functions employing signal processing operators guided by specialized heuristics.The project proposed thus addresses a central requirement of Music Archiving, Systematic Musicology, and Ethnomusicology, namely providing computerized access to large repositories of digital audio data in a contextually and semantically integrated way to allow for conclusive collation of audio data within a given database, as well as between similar databases, by employing a common and consistent set of parameters derived directly from the audio signal. This constitutes foundational research with numerous possibilities for practical implementation in a wide range of applications dealing with the preservation and the scientific study of recorded music and sound.This MIR-based classification scheme is further to be implemented in the process of systematic categorization of digital copies of the extensive collection of historic ethnographic recordings in the institute's possession. A dedicated digital database, the University of Hamburg Ethnographic Sound Recordings Archive (ESRA) , is currently being populated with such data, thus providing an ideal development and testing environment for the practical implementation of the central claims of the project proposed herein.Besides the particular technical difficulties faced by archives of non-European music, as described below, these archives in particular carry an exceptional moral and ethical responsibility: they constitute the musical memory of the world. Many orally transmitted musical traditions are rapidly fading away under the influences of global cultural change, others have long become extinct; all that is left of them are the historic recordings hidden in the shelves of ethnomusicological archives. It is an urgent mandate to the scientific community to digitally preserve, and to provide adequate access to, at least these faint traces of what were once living musical cultures, lest they sink into oblivion as the original recording media physically disintegrate, becoming lost forever.