A system is described that permits identified musical phrases or themes to be synchronized and linked into changing real-world events. The achieved synchronization includes a seamless musical transitionachieved using a timing offset, such as relative advancement of an significant musical onset, that is inserted to align with a pre-existing but identified music signature, beat or timebasebetween potentially disparate pre-identified musical phrases having different emotive themes defined by their respective time signatures, intensities, keys, musical rhythms and/or musical phrasing. The system operates to augment an overall sensory experience of a user in the real world by dynamically changing, re-ordering or repeating and then playing audio themes within the context of what is occurring in the surrounding physical environment, e.g. during different phases of a cardio workout in a step class the music rate and intensity increase during sprint periods and decrease during recovery periods.

A smart music device and process provide users with an interface to play a selected song in the correct song key. The device includes a graphical user interface with areas demarcated by translucent conductive ink printed on the layer's underside. A layer of force sensor resistors (FSRs) are under the areas. Touching one of the areas closes a circuit between then conductive ink and FSR triggering a note to be played. The demarcated areas are illuminated to guide the user on scale and root node position. Metadata in memory storage includes the song key which is used during song playback to trigger assignment of the key correct scale across the FSRs and illuminate its root position of musical notes. Touching an area triggers a signal sent to a connected musical instrument to play the note.

There is provided an apparatus configured to control a plurality of light emitting elements so that the light emitting elements display a lighting behavior based on audio output which is based on an audio file. The apparatus can include a control portion and a choreography portion. The control portion is operable to generate an instruction sequence which can be used to control the lighting behavior of the light emitting elements, the instruction sequence can include a plurality of lighting instructions. The choreography portion is operable to associate at least one lighting instruction from the plurality of lighting instructions with at least one portion of the audio file.

There is provided an apparatus configured to control a plurality of light emitting elements so that the light emitting elements display a lighting behavior. The apparatus includes a control portion operable to generate an instruction sequence. The instruction sequence controls the lighting behavior of the light emitting elements. The instruction sequence can include a plurality of lighting instructions. The control portion can include a first input portion and an option portion. The first input portion generates a first lighting instruction of the plurality of lighting instructions and the option portion can be operated by, for example, a user to present a second input portion for generating a second lighting instruction of the plurality of lighting instructions. The lighting behavior displayed by the light emitting elements can have a lighting sequence which is based on the instruction sequence where the first lighting instruction is followed by the second lighting instruction.

Advanced, but user-friendly composition and editing environments for musical scores may be provided using the types, and in some cases the instances, of computing devices that will in turn consume musical score content so generated. Indeed, by integrating musical composition facilities within synthetic musical instruments that can be widely deployed on hand-held or portable computing devices, a social music network that includes such synthetic musical instruments gains access to a large, and potentially prolific, population of authors, editors and reviewers, as well as to the community-sourced musical scores that they can generate. By curating such content and/or by applying crowd-sourcing or other computational techniques to maintain quality, a social music network may rapidly deploy the new and ever evolving content that its user community desires.

A method and a device provides a user with the ability to freely improvise or play around with a selection of different chords and be provided with visual guidance assisting the improvisation of melody, while also providing accompaniment consistent with the selection of chords. Sound files consistent with a user selection of a chord and/or a dynamic level are selected from an audio library and played, while the user is given visual cues on a user interface keyboard assisting the user to select notes that are consistent with the chord selected for the accompaniment.

A method and device for improving the sound quality of an audio file in an audio device by modifying an audio signal by means of at least one effect device. The method according to the invention includes the following method steps: a) associating the audio file with meta data; b) comparing the meta data to files in which settings of the effect device are stored; c) associating the meta data with a file from method step b), and d) loading the file from method step c) and activating the effect device, the effect device being set by means of values from the file in method step c).

A system and computer-implemented method for generating music content includes a music notation data store having a collection of notation data files and an audio data store having a collection of audio data files, each data file in the notation and audio data stores including associated music characteristic metadata. One or more computer processor is arranged to receive user music preference inputs from a user interface and to search the notation and audio data stores to identify a plurality of data files corresponding to one or more user preference input. The processor randomly selects at least one notation file and at least one audio file from the identified notation and audio files and generates a music instance file by combining the selected notation and audio files for playback to the user.

An information processing apparatus that stores a plurality of pieces of audio data, displays information corresponding to each of the plurality of pieces of audio data, receives an input selecting at least one of the plurality of pieces of audio data, reproduces a first piece of the plurality of pieces of audio data, and initiates simultaneous reproduction of a second piece of the plurality of pieces of audio data based on an input received at the interface, processes the first and second pieces of the audio data such that the first and second pieces of the audio data are separately audible by the user, and outputs the processed first and second pieces of the audio data.

In exemplary embodiments of the present invention systems and methods are provided to implement and facilitate cross-fading, interstitials and other effects/processing of two or more media elements in a personalized media delivery service so that each client or user has a consistent high quality experience. The effects or crossfade processing can occur on the broadcast, publisher or server-side, but can still be personalized to a specific user, thus still allowing a personalized experience for each individual user, in a manner where the processing burden is minimized on the downstream side or client device. This approach enables a consistent user experience, independent of client device capabilities, both static and dynamic. The cross-fade can be implemented after decoding the relevant chunks of each component clip, processing, recoding and rechunking, or, in a preferred embodiment, the cross-fade or other effect can be implemented on the relevant chunks to the effect in the compressed domain, thus obviating any loss of quality by re-encoding. A large scale personalized content delivery service can be implemented by limiting the processing to essentially the first and last chunks of any file, since there is no need to processing the full clip. In exemplary embodiments of the present invention this type of processing can easily be accommodated in cloud computing technology, where the first and last files may be conveniently extracted and processed within the cloud to meet the required load. Processing may also be done locally, for example, by the broadcaster, with sufficient processing power to manage peak load.