Papers for

music software developers

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Dance to music generation improves with hierarchical expert supervision

CMA-OT: Hierarchical Expert Supervision for Dance-to-Music Generation

Abstract: Dance-to-music (D2M) generation aims to synthesize music that is rhythmically and stylistically aligned with dance videos. A key challenge arises from the semantic mismatch between sparse dance cues, such as rhythm and style, and the dense information required for music composition, including structure, instrumentation, and expressive dynamics. Existing methods typically rely on these sparse cues and supervise only the final audio output, resulting in poorly learned music representations and generated music with limited musicality and structural coherence. To address these issues, we propose Curriculum-guided Multi-scale representation Alignment with scale-aware Optimal Transport (CMA-OT), a novel paradigm that leverages an external music expert to provide hierarchical supervision for the generator's latent features, bridging the semantic gap and enhancing representation learning. To effectively incorporate hierarchical supervision, we introduce a curriculum-guided multi-scale learning strategy that progressively transfers musical knowledge from the expert to the music generator, enabling stable and effective representation learning. Moreover, to accommodate the semantic and structural variations across different expert scales and achieve fine-grained alignment under temporal mismatch, we propose a scale-aware optimal transport alignment mechanism, which models soft correspondences between hierarchical expert representations and the generator's latent features. Extensive experiments on two datasets demonstrate that CMA-OT achieves state-of-the-art performance in rhythmic synchronization, perceptual quality, and overall music generation.

Fri 11 SeptArtificial IntelligenceSound
The gist
Generating music that matches a dance video is tricky because dance gives limited clues, while music includes many complex features. The authors developed a new method that uses a music expert model to guide the music generation process at multiple levels, helping bridge the gap between dance and music. They also teach the system step-by-step and align its understanding of music features carefully to improve quality and rhythm matching. Their experiments show better music that fits the dance style and timing well.
Open 2609.13118v1

Lempel Ziv method adjusts music note copying for better synthesis

Copying Versus Randomization in Lempel-Ziv Music Synthesis

Abstract: We utilize Lempel-Ziv universal compression for music note generation. We control the algorithm's tendency to over-copy or under-copy training data by manipulating the average sequence length saved in the dictionary.

Thu 10 SeptSoundInformation Theory
The gist
Creating new music notes from existing songs can be tricky because sometimes the computer copies too much or too little from the original. This paper uses a known method called Lempel-Ziv compression to generate music notes. The authors found ways to control how much it copies by changing how long sequences it saves during this process. This helps balance between repeating exact parts and making new random notes.
Open 2609.11353v1

TimeCues Studio enables team music annotation and algorithm testing

TimeCues Studio: A Workspace for Music Annotation and Algorithm Prototyping

Abstract: Multimedia applications require precise music annotation-labeled positions, segments, or loops-placed by hand or algorithmically. Machine-learning algorithms are scalable and effective but need annotated training data, scarce for many tasks. TimeCues Studio is an open-source workspace where algorithm-development teams annotate a music corpus, compare detection algorithms against those annotations, and prototype new ones. Unlike existing tools built for a single track at a time, TimeCues targets teams annotating whole collections, tightly integrated with algorithm development. Annotators place several marker types-each supporting ambiguity-aware labeling-on a grid-locked timeline that visualizes many music features, including separated audio stems. The same timeline drives an algorithm-comparison engine with bundled baselines, a Python sandbox for prototyping new models, and an ambiguity-aware evaluator that honors the structured fields. The same visualization suits solo annotators on music-sync projects. TimeCues is MIT-licensed and deploys via one Docker Compose command.

Wed 9 SeptSoundHuman-Computer InteractionMachine Learning
The gist
Many music applications need exact markers like beats or loops, but it takes time and effort to create these markers manually. The authors developed TimeCues Studio, a tool for teams to label large music collections and test computer programs that recognize these markers. It lets users mark music timelines with flexible labels and listens to separated parts of songs. The tool also has built-in ways to compare different algorithms and create new ones using Python, making the process faster and clearer.
Open 2609.10338v1