booktorrent

From booktorrent

Music as a Researchable Entity in the Academic Context

I view The Evergreen State College as an opportunity for unique student growth rather a bureaucratic entity. It is a kind of growth that is not readily available in the rest of country, or most of the world, and it must be exercised constantly if the institution is to retain its original purpose. By this, I mean to make one point in particular: that the scheduled renovation, and hopefully innovation of the college library must be focused on student development—not on achieving the latest and greatest iteration of a never-ending reconstruction project. So, rather than proposing a specific set of databases that will almost inevitably be outdated in the next year or two, or touting the concept of a Fluctuation Patterns over MFCCs, I would instead prefer to put forth an idea rooted in the ideals of The Evergreen State College, and the 2011 program Book Torrent.

• In lieu of the imminent reconstruction and reorganization, library faculty must entertain a certain slant towards more novel technologies—both hardware and software. This is not an endorsement of eReaders per say, but instead more screens linked directly to school indexes or in-library catalogs. Specifically, the college should spend the money to invest in an array of open-source computers and programming software to allow for student encoding in its most pertinent form.
• No matter what, these programming computers must be monetarily linked to the Evergreen library and the Evergreen library alone. Any actions that must be taken through any required fiscal avenues should be done at all costs to secure the programming-oriented computers to exist as agents for research only.
• After the redesign is completed, or during, the college should hire faculty to design a 3-quarter, full-credit program similar in structure and concept to Book Torrent. This program should allow students interested in computer sciences and programming to create a spectrogram analysis program with the concept in mind that Evergreen could one day institute the software as part of its unique approach to education.
• The administration and fiscal management of the college should take any and every step to license the Evergreen library with any and all music storage databases it can manage to secure an education discount or certification to use. Digitize any materials already available on campus in either analog or CD format.
• Provide the tools and resources to both students and program professors so that they may be able to experiment with several different analysis and modeling tools during the first two quarters and subsequently provide a detailed proposal for any one format, or any combination, along with any monetary information that would be pertinent.
• During the third quarter, the administration and fiscal management should provide resources based on the program proposal to create a reproducible version of a singular (or dual) audio analysis software to install on any desired library computer. Once in place, the software would provide the means for a navigable, online music database (via the school’s software).
• If successful, Evergreen professors could implement audio research into any programs they deemed compatible to its uses. At this point, the college would do well to ensure it legally owns all rights to the program.
• If very successful, the college administration and fiscal management would have the opportunity to license the school-created music research database over the Internet to other colleges and universities and reinvest any revenue into the college.
  
  

While in a variety of contexts this is simply handing the responsibility of final decision off to others, I feel it is part of a greater portrait of education. I do not understand enough about the different computational languages to make a truly informed proposal—not when the current state of multimedia and music information retrieval is so mutative and undeveloped. I see too much opportunity in this redesign and the extensive possibilities of a program based on these principles. Giving students more of a direct voice in the college’s physical evolution is important in the midst of multiple years of major reconstruction in many principal buildings. This proposal not only grants that voice, but also allows the opportunity for that voice to reverberate far beyond the walls of Evergreen’s library into the greater world beyond the edge of our modest, cozy little forest.