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Ask HN: What would you do if you had all classical music to work/play with?

5 points by matt_morgan ↗ HN
The conservatory I work for is considering releasing its deep history of classical music recordings online. The collection covers the entire canon of western classical music, often with multiple recordings of each piece. It is substantially less IP-restricted than most similar libraries, and our intent is ultimately to release as much as possible under something like CC Attribution 4.0 International.

Most of this music is already available online in other forms, but usually with substantial rights restrictions. Our goal is not just to get the music out to the world, but to engender the development of valuable new content, hopefully educational, by encouraging use and reuse of our collection. What would you do if you had access to professional-quality recordings of all of western classical music, and you could do whatever you want with it?

8 comments

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chmaynard
Assuming your collection consists primarily of vinyl LPs, does Curtis plan to pay someone to convert them to a digital format? Just curious.
matt_morgan
Yes, digitization is a big part of it and somebody will get paid to do it. Probably not internal staff but nothing is decided.

Not actually a lot of vinyl LPs but lots is still analog in various forms.

ksaj
For some composers, I really enjoy hearing substantially different interpretations of a piece. For example, some violin solos are interpreted in a super precise mathematical way when someone else might pour on the legato sugar when the transcript allows for it. It can radically change the overall feeling of the piece, even while maintaining note-for-note accuracy.

I live for those moments, and learn a lot more deeply about composition by digging into different interpretations of pieces that I enjoy most.

Personally, I think it should play a part of early music learning for everyone. Opening up collections like this leads to the ability to learn music at the performance level, instead of just a cursory sprinkling of famous themes played only one way.

matt_morgan
Thanks! If you were building that early music learning app/tool, what form would you want it to take? Is it like a blog post, illustrated with embedded videos/audio of the relevant passages?
taylodl
I'd want three axis of discovery:

1. Music Style

2. Composer

3. Conductor

4. Performer(s)

5. Techniques

It would be fantastic if I had a curated tool that could aid in this. I don't know what all classical musical styles I , but I know pieces I like and it would be great to springboard from that into other pieces I would most likely enjoy.

Likewise with composers, if I like Composer X then I'll probably like Composer Y. Then combine the two - if I like these musical styles of Composer X then I'll probably like these other musical styles of Composer Y.

You can see where I'm going with this. I want to explore and discover.

Finally, I'd like to be able to search through pieces for examples of a particular playing technique. For example, if a student were learning pizzicato it'd be great to be able to search for good examples of the technique from what's known they already enjoy or would likely enjoy.

matt_morgan
The multiple axes (facets in a search eg) make great sense to me, thanks. I'm not sure about any kind of behavior-based recommender tool, but we can certainly make offers based on metadata matches.

Is there anything about the fact we're (hopefully) allowing derivative works that gets you interested? After you used the axes to find something new, what would you do with it? Just listen or could you imagine writing/building something that would educate others?

yesenadam
When you say "professional-quality", just how good are the performances? You mean, recordings by students at your conservatory? Or as good as, say, the top European orchestras? What years do the recordings span? Which famous performers are represented? Sorry, it's not at all clear to me what kind of animal you mean. Sounds great though!
matt_morgan
Arguably the top conservatory in the world, with an orchestra that is often called one of the top orchestras in the world. But our expectation is that e.g. on Youtube a recording of piece X by the NY Phil will generally get more interest than a recording of piece X by the Curtis Symphony Orchestra. But we're not trying to compete on quality, we're trying to use these recordings in ways other orchestras can't.