Practica: A Music Education Application for Learning Jazz Improvisation

We present Practica, a music education application which combines the user experience of a play-along practice application, the functionality of a melody transcription program, and the soloing tips and harmonic analysis that a music student might receive from an instructor. The user can read soloing tips and introductions to harmonic analysis, record themselves soloing over a backing track, and view transcriptions of their solos with different analysis modes applied in the form of color-coded notes. We develop an audio processing and transcription pipeline to generate sheet music for solo recordings. We examine how to present the subjective teaching and evaluation of improvisation in a programmatic manner. Two user studies suggest that Practica successfully presents students with an educational platform that empowers them to improve their musical abilities and explore jazz improvisation in a interactive and beginner-friendly format.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Fiksinski, Julia

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Egozy, Eran

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright MIT

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139902

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/139902