In these days of MP3 awareness, people listen to music in digital
form all the time, but many exciting possibilities for computer
handling of music are still in various stages of research and
development. Systems exist now that try to identify--from databases
of, in some cases, millions of recordings--music heard over a jukebox
in a noisy bar and transmitted via cell phone. Other systems can
search a database of scores or MIDI files for melody, a chord
progression, or a given genre. And concerts have ben given in which
computers accompny live musicians, sometimes "improvising". In this
course, we will consider, among other things:

*how musical information can be organized, represented, manipulated
and displayed
*why it's hard to "convert" written music to performed and vice-versa
*how searching for music works, either via content (music IR) or via
metadata (library-catalog style).

In order to keep in touch with reality, we will also listen to and
look at real music as much as possible, and in as wide a varitety of
styles as possible.