Attributing a mo:Genre

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lechatpito

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Jul 10, 2007, 7:02:40 AM7/10/07
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Hi,

Let me first introduce myself,
I am a PhD student at the University of Innsbruck, DERI lab. My PhD is
about relating ontologies together. I also do work on the EASAIER
project where we use the music ontology.

Now here is my question:

How to attribute a genre in the MO ? I guess this should be related to a
Musical Work isn't it ?

Cheers,
Francois


Michael Smethurst

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Jul 10, 2007, 7:06:46 AM7/10/07
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i'd say genres should be attachable to any object down the production chain: work > signal

a composition may be in one genre but an actual performance of that composition may be in a different genre

Hi,

Cheers,
Francois


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Yves Raimond

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Jul 10, 2007, 7:10:09 AM7/10/07
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Hi Francois!

> Now here is my question:
>
> How to attribute a genre in the MO ? I guess this should be related to a
> Musical Work isn't it ?
>

Well - you have two choices here. Either you associate the genre to
the work itself. In this case, it means the "genre" to which the
original work belong (what was the intention of the composer?). Or you
can put it as a factor of a performance, or an arrangement (or other
events) - in this case, you express that a particular performance is
interpreting a work in a particular genre.

For example, I might express that Sid Vicious played my way in a "punk" version.

Cheers,
y

Richard Lewis

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Jul 10, 2007, 7:43:21 AM7/10/07
to Music Ontology Specification Group
And as another example, the Swingle Singers perform, amongst other
things, arrangements of Bach using just the human voice to create a
number of effects common contemporary hip hop, such as a beat box-like
percussive sound.

However, I've been thinking about MO's representation of genre
recently and find that its one of the aspects which betrays MO's bias
for the music of recording artists from the 1950s onwards. The classes
listed under "genre" include things like "blues, country, electronica,
funk, gospel, hiphop" etc. and then this problematic catch-all term
"classical". This is very like the method that ID3 tags use to
classify musical genre; I guess its a sort of style genre.

Genre is quite a difficult term in that it can represent several
different things as well as style. Within the canon of Western music
pre-~1950, genre often refers to musical form and performance forces,
for example, symphony, concerto or string quartet. But also to
historical period: baroque, romantic, medieval, etc. More expressivity
could be achieved by applying multiple genres: "classical symphony",
for example. And then there are artists, particularly those working
with new media, who explicitly try to be uncategorisable. Under what
classification does a sound installation come? Or a mixed audio/visual
work? And what about more aleatoric music?

Its quite interesting to use your browser's find facility on
http://musicontology.com/ and search for words like "symphony",
"baroque", "installation".

Sorry, I haven't really answered the question :-(

Cheers,
Richard

Yves Raimond

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Jul 10, 2007, 7:54:50 AM7/10/07
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Hi Richard!


> However, I've been thinking about MO's representation of genre
> recently and find that its one of the aspects which betrays MO's bias
> for the music of recording artists from the 1950s onwards. The classes
> listed under "genre" include things like "blues, country, electronica,
> funk, gospel, hiphop" etc. and then this problematic catch-all term
> "classical". This is very like the method that ID3 tags use to
> classify musical genre; I guess its a sort of style genre.

Well, the "genre taxonomy" inside MO is not at all something that
should be used, for sure - it is just a guideline on how to plug a
genre taxonomy under the mo:Genre concept. After that, you are free to
use any genre taxonomy available out there (for example, the dbpedia
one).

>
> Genre is quite a difficult term in that it can represent several
> different things as well as style. Within the canon of Western music
> pre-~1950, genre often refers to musical form and performance forces,
> for example, symphony, concerto or string quartet. But also to
> historical period: baroque, romantic, medieval, etc. More expressivity
> could be achieved by applying multiple genres: "classical symphony",
> for example. And then there are artists, particularly those working
> with new media, who explicitly try to be uncategorisable. Under what
> classification does a sound installation come? Or a mixed audio/visual
> work? And what about more aleatoric music?

That's exactly why MO doesn't define anything for such categorisation
- it just provides a framework allowing to plug in any categorisation
you may want, and focus on unambiguous concepts (music production
related ones).
Maybe it could be a fair option to just remove the small genre
taxonomy embedded within MO, as it causes confusion by letting think
it is an authoritative one. Only the mo:Genre concept should be left,
therefore allowing other taxonomies to plug into MO by linking to this
concept.


Best,
Yves

Frederick Giasson

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Jul 10, 2007, 8:07:36 AM7/10/07
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Hi all,

> That's exactly why MO doesn't define anything for such categorisation
> - it just provides a framework allowing to plug in any categorisation
> you may want, and focus on unambiguous concepts (music production
> related ones).
> Maybe it could be a fair option to just remove the small genre
> taxonomy embedded within MO, as it causes confusion by letting think
> it is an authoritative one. Only the mo:Genre concept should be left,
> therefore allowing other taxonomies to plug into MO by linking to this
> concept.
>


Exact, has we discussed again and again, and as it is wrote on the wiki :)

In fact, in the next revision we should delete them, and create (at
least a small) genre taxonomy to show people how MO is developed to be used.

The next revision of MO should be worked out and released soon. I am
currently finishing the first and early draft of the bibliographic
ontology, after that I will put some time on it.

Take care,


Fred

Yrjänä Rankka

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Jul 10, 2007, 8:10:11 AM7/10/07
to music-ontology-sp...@googlegroups.com
On 7/10/07, Michael Smethurst <Michael....@bbc.co.uk> wrote:
i'd say genres should be attachable to any object down the production chain: work > signal

a composition may be in one genre but an actual performance of that composition may be in a different genre

Yes. One could use elements/samples from one genre to produce music in another.

Genres should be a taxonomy.

Yrjänä
 

Yves Raimond

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Jul 10, 2007, 8:18:07 AM7/10/07
to music-ontology-sp...@googlegroups.com
> The next revision of MO should be worked out and released soon. I am
> currently finishing the first and early draft of the bibliographic
> ontology, after that I will put some time on it.

Ok - I am slowly getting through the todo list available there:
http://wiki.musicontology.com/index.php/Todo_list
and update the code accordingly.

Please any of you feel free to take a look at the todo list, and add
points or provide comments on existing points.

There are some *big* changes to be done, that will surely take quite a
lot of time (especially the one dealing with verb vs. noun for
predicate name).

I just updated the event ontology, btw:
http://purl.org/ontology/mo/event.owl#
(it supports content negotiation to provide both rdf/xml and n3 - the
n3 representation is commented, small, and easy to read).

Best,
y

>
>
>
> Take care,
>
>
> Fred
>
>
> >
>

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