Just a quick list, incomplete and vague at times.  They should be
treated as starting points
==John ffitch
========================================================================
Area: MUSIC PROJECTS
      ==============

4. UPIC CLONE
   Prereq: C programming; knowledge of graphics and music useful.
	A clone of UPIC or HyperUPIC, an interesting graphics-to-music
        systems designed by Iannis Xenakis.

5. IBSEN
   Prereq: C programming; knowledge of graphics and music useful.
	IBSEN is a spectral language which I have been considering for
        some years.  It could involve graphics.

10. CSOUND GUI
   Prereq: C programming; knowledge of music and graphics useful.
        A graphical system to assist a sound designer in creating
        sounds.  Mainly involves drawing graphs, cleaning them and
        representing them well, saving and restoring, on X.

11. SOUND FILER AND EXTRACTOR
   Prereq: C programming; knowledge of music and/or databases useful.
        Sounds are difficult to classify.  However some recent work
        has suggested a simple and useful way of classifying samples
        so they can be retrieved by example.  Develop this into a
        portable system for Csound.

12. ORCHESTRA ORGANISER
   Prereq: C programming; knowledge of music useful.
        The Csound synthesiser language would be greatly improved with
        an orchestra assembler and organiser.  The simple form would
        be for MIDI, but a good program would go much further.

13. SOUND UNDERSTANDING
    Prereq: C programming; knowledge of Music useful
        Understanding a street scene is extremely hard.  However if
        the input sound is simple (monophonic music, known tuning) it
        may be much easier.  Investigate whether simple melodies can
        be understood from synthetic sources, and develop

16. CSOUND GUI PROJECT
    Prereq: Knowledge of parsing, XML
        Csound is usually considered to be hard to learn.  Some people
        advocate a graphical front-end, but that is also restrictive.
        Using the Diag program, develop an abstratc XML
        representation, so editing can be via graphics or via text
        editing.

27. FILTER DESIGN
    Prereq: C programming; Music/DSP useful
        Turn Meteor or Ellf filter design program into a useful program,
        preferably generating Csound filters

28. INSTRUMENTS WITH UNDERSTANDING
    Prereq: C programming; Music/DSP useful
        There is a desire for instruments in csound that understand their 
        amplitude response, pitch response etc.  The project is to devise 
        instrumentation systems to scale instruments for use in the
        performance agent system

29. DIGITAL DRUM
    Prereq: C or C++ programming; Music/DSP and mathematics useful
        There is a model of a drum based on digital waveguides which was
        developed by Marc Aird.  This model needs a reference
        implementation of a tom-tom drum using a stiff membrane model
        with damping and interaction with the exciter.

30. ALGORITHMIC COMPOSITION
    Prereq: Musical knowledge
        Construct programs to compose music in any one of the myriad
        of styles.
        Possibilitiesd include jazz-improvisation, free jazz, harrmonisation, 
        orcheatration, dance music, chaotic structures......

31. TABLA RHYTHMS
    Prereq: Knowledge of Indian music theory, love of Hindustani music
            or interest in it
        The tabla (North Indian drums) have a particularly strong 
        theoretic system with in which the performer improvises.
        There are fixed patterns (Tikhas), fixed compositions
        (Kayeda), as well as starts (Mukha) and endings (Tihai).
        Working from one taal (I would recommend Tintaal) write
        software to create valid patterns. 
        (with apologies for my Hindi/Bengali spelling)

31. SONNIFICATION (I)
    Prereq: Numeracy
        The ear is very sensitive, and it can be used to understand
        data.  Sonnification is the process of constructing sound from
        (large) data sets.  Mapping the numbers to sounds can be
        challenging, but the idea is to allow different flights
        through the data.
    
31. SONNIFICATION (II)
    Prereq: not much
        Similar to the previous project idea, but take pictures -- 2D
        computer pictures for example -- as the input data

32. PSYCHOACOUSTICS DEMONSTRATOR
    Prereq: Music or psychology would be useful
        There are a number of known ways in which the ear can be
        tricked into hearing what is not the case.  Write a set of
        programs to show these effects, and test them on a set of
        fellow-students to show that they work (or otherwise)
        A starting point is the work of Diana Deutsch which is in the
        library. 

Area: MISCELLANEOUS
      =============

18. EMACS MAIL ORGAINSER
    Prereq: Knowledge of LISP, especially emacs LISP
        I read mail in emacs using the long-standing RMAIL format.
        This allows messages to be labelled with tags, and displayed
        via tags.  I have a draft program to organise tags, count
        messages with each tag etc.  The project is to take this
        program and tidy it up, and extend with new organisational
        features.

23. A GENERIC PROJECT SYSTEM
    Prereq: C programming. UNIX and Emacs helpful
        On PCs and Macintoshes one expects compilers to have a user
        interface which integrates the roles of Makefile, editors and 
        browsers.  Construct a similar system for UNIX, using Emacs as
        the unifying system.  Initially it must deal with C, although
        the design should extend to other languages.