Nick Bailey
Nick Bailey is a Director of the Centre for Music Technology and is based in the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering at The University of Glasgow.
Upon graduating from The University of Durham in 1987, he worked at British Telecom Applied Technology "Comms Division" writing bespoke software for BT's larger customers, and maintaining large databases on alarmingly obsolete mainframe computers. Thus equipped with a working knowledge of the inappropriately coupled applied signal processing and corporate computing disciplines, he left as soon as etiquette would permit to return to Durham to read for a Ph.D. in The Application of Parallel Computers to the Processing of Musical Signals.
Appointed Lecturer in Electronic Engineering at the University of Leeds, he was a founder member and Deputy Director of their Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Research in Music (ICSRiM).
In 2000, he moved to The University of Glasgow to take over the directorship of the Electronic Engineering aspect of the CMT.
Contact Details
Dr Nicholas Bailey
Director, Centre for Music Technology
Dept of Electronics & Electrical Enineering
University of Glasgow
Rankine Building
Oakfield Avenue
Glasgow G12 8LT
tel +44 (0)141 330 4903
Previous Positions
1986–1987: Executive Engineer, British Telecom PLC, BT Applied Technology Communications Group (non-executive since 1983).
1990–1991: Temporary Lecturer, School of Engineering and Computing Science, University of Durham.
1991–2000: Lecturer in Electronic Engineering, University of Leeds. Deputy Director and founder member of Leeds University's ICSRiM (Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Research in Music)
2000–Present: Senior Lecturer, Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, The University of Glasgow; Director, Glasgow University Centre for Music Technology.
A founder member and creator of n-ISM.
Ongoing Research Projects
Onset Detection using Time-Domain Techniques
A Hopf, Skip and a Jump
The application of quasi-chaotic differential equations in the time domain to improve the accuracy and reliablilty of onset detection from audio recordings.
Performance Markup Language
Computer analysis of musical performance requires simultaneous consideration of the score and the resulting performance data, because interesting information about the performance is contained within a performer's inflections and departure from the strict score rather than in the measured performance information itself. A method of representing these and possibly many other aspects of a given performance is therefore required. Performance Markup Language (PML) is an open, extendable XML-based representation which is intended to be used as a basis for systems used to investigate elements of musical performance. It can be used to extend XML-based musical notation representations to include support for the representation of performance markup and analytical structures.
Among the project's long-term aims is the provision of "music awareness" with relational databases such as PostgreSQL. A python extension for postgres is available which allows "musical arithmetic" (calculations involving intervals, beats and so on) to be undertaken. It is hosted at https://github.com/nickbailey/ThomasArne
Selected Previous Research Projects
Bogen
Empirical Study of Bowing Techniques in Bartok's Third String Quartet and other works. The Principal Investigator for this project is Carola Boehm (Head of Department of Contemporary Arts, Manchester Metropolitan University) Co-Investigators: Dr Amanda Bayley (Wolverhampton University); Prof Graham Hair.
Pierrot Lunaire
Empirical Study of Vocal Techniques in Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire The Principal Investigator for this project is Jane Manning (international soprano) Co-Investigators: Mr Ben Hillman and Prof Graham Hair.
Listening to Music: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Measurement, Analysis and Interpretation.
Conference and Colloquium Series, 2008–2010.
Multimodal Analysis of the Performance of Chopin's B-flat minor Sonata Finale
Animatics for the Web (2002–2004)
OpenDrama — The Digital Heritage of Opera in the Open Network Environment (2001–2004)
Rehearsing Microtonal Music: Grappling with Performance and Intonational Problems (2006–2007)
CIRCUS (Content-Integrated Research into Creative User Systems)
DMRN (Digital Music Research Network)
Selected Publications
(Slides LibreOffice odp file, zipped)
Bryony Buck, Jennifer MacRitchie and Nicholas J Bailey The Interpretive Shaping of Embodied Musical Structure in Piano Performance Empricial Musicology Review 8(2), pp92-119
Jennifer MacRitchie, Bryony Buck, Nicholas J. Bailey Inferring Musical Structure through Bodily Gestures Musicæ Scientæ
Cordelia Hall, John T. O'Donnell, and Nicholas Bailey BowScribe: Supporting the violinist's performance model. International Symposium on Performance Science (ISPS 2011), August 2011, Toronto.
Bryony Buck, Jennifer MacRitchie, Nicholas Bailey Perceptual recognition of embodied musical structure Musical Body Conference 2009, Institute for Music Research. IMR, University of London UK
Jennifer MacRitchie, Bryony Buck, Nicholas Bailey Visualising Musical Structure through Performance Gesture Proceedings of the 10th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, 26th-30th October 2009, Kobe, Japan
Jennifer MacRitchie, Bryony Buck, Nicholas Bailey Gestural Communication: Linking the Multi-Modal Analysis of Performance to Perception of Musical Structure Proceedings of the International Symposium of Performance Science Auckland, New Zealand
Jennifer MacRitchie, Stuart Pullinger, Graham Hair, Nicholas Bailey Communicating Phrasing Structure with Multi-Modal Expressive Techniques in Piano Performance Proceedings of The Second International Conference on Music Communication Science, 3-4 December 2009, Sydney, Australia
Invited Presentations
View Paper Informing Microtonal Performance through Listening with Alex South (clariettist) "The Anatomy of Listening" Colloquium, Glasgow University (2009).
Empirical Studies of Musical Performance: Measurement, Analysis & Interpretation with Graham Hair and Ben Hillman Grove Forum, Royal College of Music, London, January 15, 2009
Department of Adult and Continuing Education (DACE) Study Day with all contemporary CMT members Glasgow University, June 14, 2008
Released Software
Rosegarden Codicil
This is an interrim release of the Glasgow Pitch Tracker codicil for Rosegarden. If you are looking for a regular version of Rosegarden, the great MIDI sequencer for Linux, you should go to the main site at http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/. This released is based on an old version, modified slightly to compile and install on a modern Linux box (tested on Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty"). It will only be of any use to you if you intend to run experiments in systematic musicology, or need to use the microtonal real-time pitch trajectory analysis capability.
You can download what you need from this directory. For easy installation, please attend to the README file.
Technology Demonstrators
No longer available because of Glasgow University poicy on off-site access.