Nicolas Guiomard-Kagan received a Master's Degree in Computer Science and Applications from the University of Rouen. He did his internship of Master 2 on the rational languages k-blocks deterministes at LITIS (Haute-Normandie). Since 2013, Nicolas Guiomard-Kagan has been preparing his thesis at MIS (UPJV, Amiens), and is working on simplifying the analysis of polyphonic partitions by decomposing them into monophonic voices or streams (coherent sets of notes). He is supervised by Mathieu Giraud, Richard Groult and Florence Levé in the Algomus research group.

Scientific Activities

I'm in SDMA team of MIS laboratory. I'm also in Algomus research group between Amiens and Lille University on Music informatics. My area of research are Music information retrieval and text algorithms. I work with symbolic data (score) on which I apply techniques derived from text algorithms.
Music can be either monophonic (a single note sounds at each time) or polyphonic (several notes sound simultaneously, building harmonies). Understanding polyphonic music can be very complex. The goal of my research is to ease the analysis of polyphonic scores by splitting them in either monophonic voices or streams (coherent sets of notes). I proposed a comparaison between three voices separation algorithms and three streams separation algorithms. I proposed also an evaluation method to fairly compare these two approaches. This work was published in the International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR 2015). The conclusions of this study led me to propose an improvement of a voice separation algorithm, published in proceedings of ISMIR 2016.
One of my goals is now to contribute to the computational music analysis of polyphonic music by combining some features I have been working on with new machine learning approaches.

Thesis

Abstract

Music can be either monophonic (a single note sounds at each time) or polyphonic (several notes sound simultaneously, building harmonies). Understanding polyphonic music can be very complex. The goal of this thesis in computer music is to ease the analysis of polyphonic scores by splitting them in either monophonic voices or streams (coherent sets of notes).

Research in this thesis first consists in comparing three voices separation algorithms and three streams separation algorithms. I propose an evaluation method to fairly compare these two approaches. This study shows the qualities of the Chew and Wu algorithm. The first step of this algorithm, which segments the score into “contigs” having a constant number of voices, is particularly robust.

Further work of this thesis focuses on the second stage of the Chew and Wu algorithm that defines what contigs to connect and how to connect them. I improve these connections by using musical parameters such as the average pitch di erence between neighbor contigs. The thesis concludes by evaluating simultaneously voice separation and pattern matching for the music analysis of fugues.

Links to the thesis in French and the slides in English.

Publications

Article of international conference with reviewing committee

Article of national conference with reviewing committee

  • Musical stones are a tangible interactive device (see figure on the left) for experimenting musical notions by playing and manipulating objects, both for the general public and for learning musicians.This pedagogical device is based on our ability to listen and does not require prior knowledge. The participant solves games by ordering the stones, each representing a sound or group of sounds. The stones introduce elements of musical analysis and are used at events of scientific mediation.

Collaboration

Software development

Scientific diffusion

Communications / talk

Popular science, scientific mediation

  • 2014, 2015 et 2016 : Festival of Science (Fêtes de la science) of UPJV: presentation of musical stones. The goal was to explain in a fun way the Music informatics. This animations made it possible to introduce some notions of musical analysis to a young audience by reconstructing a melody from fragments and regrouping musical extracts according to their resemblance.
  • 2015 et 2016 : Connexion, digital encounters : presentation of musical stones.
  • 2015 : Make science( Faites de la science) of UPJV : presentation of musical stones.

Teaching activities

During the year 2014/2015, I had an extended doctoral contract that allowed me to give 64 hours of teaching. In 2016/2017, I had a temporary teaching and research assistant contract for which I gave 176 hours of teaching. In addition to these two contracts, I gave courses in 2015 and 2016 in an engineering school and in a communication school. Lessons carried (totaling 266 hours) allowed me to discover several facets of the teaching profession, both in the dissemination of knowledge (theoretical course / pratical course) and in the evaluation of knowledge (writing and correction of exams, project defenses, pratical evaluation). Moreover, the courses achieved in school of engineer and school of communication allowed me to teach to different audiences. The tutoring I did during my Master 2 allowed me to help a student in difficulty.

Administrative Responsibilities