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Accessing Tape Music Documents on Mobile Devices

Published:21 October 2015Publication History
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Abstract

The aim of this article is to present and discuss an innovative methodology aimed at accessing digitized copies of historical tape music audio documents; the methodology leverages on the multimedia and multisensory capabilities of mobile devices to provide an unprecedented level of fruition. In addition to the methodology, and stemming from it, we present an actual software application for Android tablet devices. This novel piece of software was designed and developed in a multidisciplinary team involving engineers as well as musicians, composers, and archivists. The strongest element in our work is the fact that it follows a rigorous process and it is based on the principles of philological awareness; thus, it also takes into consideration the critical points in the musicologist's domain such as (i) the definition of preservation (i.e., master) copy, (ii) the importance of secondary information, (iii) the history of production and transmission of audio documents.

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  1. Accessing Tape Music Documents on Mobile Devices

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    Alyx Macfadyen

    Canazza, Fantozzi, and Pretto present a methodology to access digitized copies of tape music using mobile devices. The aim is to gather and include the notes, history, and other ancillary information made available by the original musicologist(s), and to faithfully reproduce the audio via the representation of a real-world tape recorder as the user interface (UI) on a tablet or phablet, for example. The authors describe the development of an Android app called REMIND (Restoring the Experience: Mobile INterfaces for accessing Digitized recordings). The purpose of the app is to recreate "the experience of a reel-to-reel audio tape recorder." I was unable to find this app on the Google Play Store, but I did find several apps such as Four Reels [1] that also recreate the skills needed to operate a reel-to-reel tape recorder via a digital interface. Three project objectives are outlined in the paper. 1. A simulation of interaction with a tape recorder. 2. Faithful playback of the original audio signal. 3. Retrieval and storage of ancillary information such as annotations, metadata, and splices. REMIND's purpose of safeguarding metadata, splices, annotations, and ancillary information from an original recording via mobile devices is a useful and important contribution to the philological accuracy of stored media. However, a small laptop running a free app such as Audacity [2] would facilitate those same tasks using a standard audio editing interface. I am not convinced the UI simulation of a reel-to-reel tape recorder is the best choice for all users, although the authors make a compelling case in favor of this. The addition of a standard audio editing interface may well prove useful as this is something most sound engineers use and would add an alternative useful feature. I have not been able to trial this app, but if it does function as the authors describe, and you are comfortable or enjoy using reel-to-reel recorders, then this app may prove useful. Online Computing Reviews Service

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    • Published in

      cover image ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications
      ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications  Volume 12, Issue 1s
      Special Issue on Smartphone-Based Interactive Technologies, Systems, and Applications and Special Issue on Extended Best Papers from ACM Multimedia 2014
      October 2015
      317 pages
      ISSN:1551-6857
      EISSN:1551-6865
      DOI:10.1145/2837676
      Issue’s Table of Contents

      Copyright © 2015 ACM

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      • Published: 21 October 2015
      • Accepted: 1 June 2015
      • Revised: 1 April 2015
      • Received: 1 December 2014
      Published in tomm Volume 12, Issue 1s

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