Klaus Frieler

Research Interests

  • Computational musicology
  • Statitical & mathematical music psychology
  • Music Creativity
  • Jazz
  • Music information Retrieval
  • Methods in musicology
  • Popular music research
  • Copyright and copyright law

Klaus Frieler is doing research at the interface of music psychology and music informatices. Big aand small data sets are his daily bread and joy, always in the hope to find hidden patterns which can tell about what music is, why it is, and how it is.

Vita

Education

2008PhD in Systematic Musicology, University of Hamburg
1997Diploma in Theoretical Physics, University of Hamburg

Employment

since March 2021Method Specalist, Max-Planck-Institut für empirische Ästhetik
2019-2021Scientific Consultant (LonGold Project and others)
2017-2019Postdoc Researcher, Dig That Lick Project, University of Music "Franz Liszt" Weimar/td>
2017Postdoc Researcher, Max-Planck-Institut für empirische Ästhetik
2012–2017Postdoc researcher, Jazzomat Research Project, University of Music "Franz Liszt" Weimar
2012Research Assistant, Queen Mary College, University of London
2008–2012Lecturer for systematic musicology, University of Hamburg
since 2008Freelance scientific consultant 
since 2006 Freelance music expert witness
2004–2008Teaching assignments in systematic musicology, University of Hamburg
2001–2007Freelance software developer
  

Publications

Selection, see www.mu-on.org for complete list and links.

1. Peer-reviewed Journals

Corcoran, Chris & Frieler, Klaus (2021). Playing It Straight: Analyzing Jazz Soloists’ Swing Eighth-note Distributions with the Weimar Jazz Database. Music Perception (2021) 38 (4): 372–385.

Frieler, Klaus (2020). Miles Vs. Trane: Computational and Statistical Comparison of the Improvisatory Styles of Miles Davis and John ColtraneJazz Perspectives 12,(1), 123-145

Omigie, Diana; Frieler, Klaus; Bär, Christian; Muralikrishnan, R.; Wald-Fuhrmann, Melanie and Fischinger, Timo (2019). Experiencing musical beauty: emotional subtypes and their physiological and musico-acoustic correlatesPsychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts , online first: doi:10.1037/aca0000271.

Akkermans, Jessica; Schapiro, Renee; Müllensiefen, Daniel; Jakubowski, Kelly; Shanahan, Daniel; Baker, David; Busch, Veronika; Lothwesen, Kai; Elvers, Paul; Fischinger, Timo; Schlemmer, Kathrin & Frieler, Klaus (2018). Decoding emotions in expressive music performances: A multi-lab replication and extension study. Cognition & Emotion. Published online first Nov 8th, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2018.1541312

Lange, Elke B. & Frieler, Klaus (2018). Challenges and opportunities of predicting musical emotions with perceptual and automatized featuresMusic Psychology, 36 (2) , 217-242

Abeßer, J., Frieler, K., Cano, E., Pfleiderer, M., & Zaddach, W.-G. (2016). Score-Informed Analysis of Tuning, Intonation, Pitch Modulation, and Dynamics in Jazz Solos. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, 25(1), 164-173. doi: 10.1109/TASLP.2016.2627186.

Frieler, Klaus, Pfleiderer, Martin, Abeßer, Jakob & Zaddach, Wolf-Georg (2016). "Telling a story". On the dramaturgy of monophonic jazz solos. Empirical Musicology Review, 11(1).

Frieler, Klaus, Pfleiderer, Martin, Abeßer, Jakob & Zaddach, Wolf-Georg (2016). Midlevel analysis of monophonic jazz solos. A new approach to the study of improvisation. Musicae Scientiae, 20 (2), 143-162. Rohdaten und Zusatzmaterial.

Frieler, Klaus; Pfleiderer, Martin; Abeßer, Jakob & Wolf-Georg Zaddach (im Druck). Chasing the Difference. Computer-aided Comparison of Improvisation in Post-bop, Hard bop, and Bebop. Jazzforschung / Jazz Research, 46.

Fischinger, Timo; Frieler, Klaus &, Louhivuori, Jukka (2015). Influence of Virtual Room Acoustics on Choir Singing. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 25(3), 208-218.

Frieler, Klaus (2015). Absolute Pitch in Oral Transmission of Folk Tunes as Constrained Random Walks. Commentary on Olthof et al. (2015). Empirical Musicology Review, 10(3).

Abeßer, Jakob; Cano, Estefania; Frieler, Klaus; Pfleiderer, Martin & Zaddach, Wolf-Georg (2015). Score-informed analysis of intonation and pitch modulation in jazz solos. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, Malaga, 2015.

Frieler, Klaus; Jakubowski, Kelly & Müllensiefen, Daniel (2015). Is it the Song and Not the Singer? Hit Song Prediction Using Structural Features of Melodies. In: Auhagen, W., Bullerjahn, C. & von Georgi, R. (Ed.) Jahrbuch Musikpsychologie 25, Göttingen: Hogrefe-Verlag.

von Georgi, Richard & Frieler, Klaus (2014). Offenohrigkeit als eine valenz- und stimulusunabhängige Persönlichkeitseigenschaft. Jahrbuch Musikpsychologie (=W. Auhagen, C. Bullerjahn & R. von Georgi (Ed.), Musikpsychologie. Jahrbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Musikpsychologie, Göttingen: Hogrefe), 12/2014, 24:59-86.

Mauch, Matthias; Frieler, Klaus & Dixon, Simon (2014). Intonation in Unaccompanied Singing: Accuracy, Drift and a Model of Reference Pitch Memory. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 136 (1), 401-11.

Frieler, Klaus; Fischinger, Timo; Schlemmer, Kathrin; Jakubowski, Kelly; Müllensiefen, Daniel & Lothwesen, Kai (2013). Absolute Memory for Pitch: A Comparative Replication of Levitin's 1994 Study in Six European Labs. Musicae Scientiae, Special issue: Replication in music psychology, 7(3), 334-349.

Frieler, Klaus; Müllensiefen, Daniel; Fischinger, Timo; Schlemmer, Kathrin; Jakubowski, Kelly & Lothwesen, Kai (2013). Replication in Music Psychology. Musicae Scientiae, Special issue: Replication in music psychology, 7(3), 265-276.

Frieler, Klaus (2012). Sieben Postulate zur Planung und Evaluation von Lehrmethoden und ein Beispiel. ZHW-Almanach, Online-Zeitschrift des Zentrums für Hochschul- und Weiterbildung der Universität Hamburg. URL: www.zhw.uni-hamburg.de/almanach/.

Frieler, Klaus & Riedemann, Frank (2011). Is Independent (Re)creation Likely to Happen in Pop Music? Musicae Scientiae, 15 (1), 17-28.

Müllensiefen, Daniel; Pfleiderer, Martin & Frieler, Klaus (2009). The Perception of Accents in Pop Music Melodies. Journal of New Music Research, 38(1), 19-44.

Müllensiefen, Daniel & Frieler, Klaus (2007). Modelling Experts' Notion of Melodic Similarity. Musicae Scientiae, Discussion Forum 4A, 183-210.

Müllensiefen, Daniel & Frieler, Klaus (2004). Cognitive Adequacy in the Measurement of Melodic Similarity: Algorithmic vs. Human Judgments. Computing in Musicology, Vol. 13, 147-176.

Frieler, Klaus & Rehren, Karl-Henning (1998). A non-abelian square root of abelian vertex operators. J. Math. Phys., Vol. 39, 3073-3090.

2. Monographies

Pfleiderer, Martin; Frieler, Klaus; Abeßer, Jakob; Zaddach, Wolf-Georg & Burkhard, Benjamin (Eds.) (2017). Inside the Jazzomat. New Perspectives for Jazz Research. Mainz: Schott Campus.

Stetter, Bitten; Wandeler, Eva & Frieler, Klaus (2012). Sketch & Scratch. Das Skizzenbuch im Spannungsfeld analoger und digitaler Arbeitsweisen im ersten Ideenfindungsprozess. Zürich: ZHdK

Frieler, Klaus (2009). Mathematik und kognitive Melodieforschung. Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovac (Dissertation).

3. Book chapters

Frieler, Klaus (2017). Gruppierung, Ordnung und Ähnlichkeit in der Musik. In: A. Lehmann, R. Kopiez (Eds.): Handbuch Musikpsychologie. Bern: Hogrefe.

Frieler, Klaus (2017). Bob Berg's solo on Angles. In: M. Pfleiderer, K. Frieler, J. Abeßer, W.-G. Zaddach, & B. Burkhard (Eds.): Inside the Jazzomat. New Perspectives for Jazz Research(pp. 243-272). Mainz: Schott Campus. (Solo available here)

Frieler, Klaus (2017). Computational melody analysis. In: M. Pfleiderer, K. Frieler, J. Abeßer, W.-G. Zaddach, & B. Burkhard (Eds.): Inside the Jazzomat. New Perspectives for Jazz Research(pp. 41-83). Mainz: Schott Campus.

Abeßer, Jakob & Frieler, Klaus (2017). Score-informed audio analysis of jazz improvisation. In: M. Pfleiderer, K. Frieler, J. Abeßer, W.-G. Zaddach, & B. Burkhard (Eds.): Inside the Jazzomat. New Perspectives for Jazz Research(pp. 97-129). Mainz: Schott Campus.

Frieler, Klaus (2017). The FlexQ algorithm. In: M. Pfleiderer, K. Frieler, J. Abeßer, W.-G. Zaddach, & B. Burkhard (Eds.): Inside the Jazzomat. New Perspectives for Jazz Research(pp. 319-322). Mainz: Schott Campus.

Pfleiderer, Martin & Frieler, Klaus (2010). The Jazzomat project. Issues and methods for the automatic analysis of jazz improvisations. In: Bader, R., Neuhaus, C. und Morgenstern, U. (Ed.) Concepts, Experiments, and Fieldwork: Studies in Systematic Musicology and Ethnomusicology, Frankfurt/M., Bern: P. Lang, pp. 279-295.

Frieler, Klaus (2008). Metrical Circle Map and Metrical Markov Chains. In: Schneider, A. (Ed.) Systematic and Comparative Musicology, Frankfurt/M., Bern: P. Lang, pp. 157-169.

4. Proceedings

Frieler, Klaus; Başaran, Doğaç; Höger, Frank, & Crayencour, Hélène-Camille; Peeters, Geoffroy; Dixon, Simon (2019) Don’t hide in the frames: Note- and pattern-based evaluation of automated melody extraction algorithms. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Digital Libraries for Musicology (DLfM ’19), November 9, 2019, The Hague, Netherlands.

Frieler, Klaus; Höger, Frank, & Pfleiderer, Martin (2019). Anatomy of a lick. Structure & variants, history & transmission . In: Book of Abstracts of the Digital Humanities Conference, Utrecht, 2019.

Frieler, Klaus (2019). Constructing jazz lines. Taxonomy, Vocabulary, Grammar . In: M. Pfleiderer & W.-G. Zaddach (Eds.), Jazzforschung heute. Themen, Methoden, Perspektiven, Berlin: Edition Emwas

Höger, Frank; Frieler, Klaus; & Pfleiderer, Martin (2019). Digging into pattern usage within jazz improvisation (Pattern History Explorer, Pattern Search and Similarity Search). In: Book of Abstracts of the Digital Humanities Conference, Utrecht 2019.

Frieler, Klaus; Höger, Frank; Pfleiderer, Marting. & Dixon, Simon (2018). Two web applications for exploring melodic patterns in jazz solos. In: E. Gómez, X. Hu, E. Humphrey, E. Benetos (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR), 2018.

Frieler, Klaus (2018). A feature history of jazz improvisation. In: W. Knauer (Eds.) Jazz @100. Darmstadt Studies in Jazz Research (Vol. 15), pp. 67--90. Hofheim: Wolke Verlag

Frieler, Klaus & Pfleiderer, Martin (2017). Onbeat oder offbeat? Überlegungen zur symbolischen Darstellung von Musik am Beispiel der metrischen Quantisierung. Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bonn. doi: 10.18420/in2017_07

Frieler, K., Pfleiderer, M., & Zaddach, W.-G. (2016). Pitch class hierarchies in Miles Davis's "So What": Reconsidering modal jazz improvisation with computer-based analysis tools . In: Wolfgang Auhagen & Wolfgang Hirschmann (Ed.), Beitragsarchiv zur Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung Halle/Saale 2015 - "Musikwissenschaft: die Teildisziplinen im Dialog", Mainz, Schott Campus.

Bronner, Kai, Frieler, Klaus, Bruhn, Herbert, Hirt, Rainer & Piper, Dag. (2012). What is the Sound of Citrus? In: Cambouropoulos, E. et al. (Ed.) Proceedings of the 12th ICMPC and 8th ESCOM, Thessaloniki.

Schneider, Albrecht & Frieler, Klaus (2009). Perception of Harmonic and Inharmonic Sounds. In: Kronland-Martinet R., Ystad, S. & Jensen, K. (Ed.) Proceedings of the CMMR2008, Lectures Notes in Computer Science, Berlin: Springer, pp. 18-44.

Frieler, Klaus (2007). Visualizing Music on the Metrical Circle. Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Music Information Retrieval, ISMIR2007, Wien: OCG, pp. 291-292.

Frieler, Klaus (2006).Generalized N-gram measures for melodic similarity. In: Batagelij, V., Bock, H.-H., Ferligoj, A., Ziberna, A. (Ed.) Data Science and Classification, Berlin: Springer, pp. 289-299.

Frieler, Klaus & Müllensiefen, Daniel (2006). Evaluation of approaches to measuring melodic similarity. In: Batagelij, V., Bock, H.-H., Ferligoj, A., Ziberna, A. (Ed.) Data Science and Classification, Berlin: Springer, pp. 299-306.

Frieler, Klaus (2004). Beat and meter extraction using gaussified onsets. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, pp. 178-183.

Müllensiefen, Daniel & Frieler, Klaus (2004). Optimizing Measures of melodic similarity for the exploration of a large folk-song database. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, pp. 274-280.

Müllensiefen, Daniel & Frieler, Klaus (2004). Melodic Similarity: Approaches and Applications. In: Scott Lipscomb, Richard Ashley, Robert Gjerdingen & Peter Webster (Hg.) Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition.

5. Misc

Frieler, Klaus & Abeßer, Jakob (2014-2017). MeloSpyGUI & Weimar Jazz Database: Documentation and Tutorials.

Müllensiefen, Daniel & Frieler, Klaus (2006). The SIMILE algorithms documentation. Interner Technischer Report.

6. Software

MeloSpyGUI and MeloSpySuite: Melodic analysis tools (feature extraction, pattern mining & search, data conversion, nwith Jakob Abeßer).

MeloWorks:  Website for the analysis of folk songs  (with Frank Höger and Jörg Korries).

Melex:  Website for the analysis of folk songs (prototype for Melowork).

Awards & Grants

2009Young Researcher's Award ESCOM 2009, Honorable Mention.
2008–2010E-Learning project "Meloworks" supported by "an Seminare ans Netz" grant by University of Hamburg.
1998–2000Doctoral fellowship of the Free Hanseactic City of Hamburg.