Nowadays, distributed development is common in software development. Besides many advantages, research in the last decade has consistently found that distribution has a negative impact on collaboration in general, and communication delay and time to complete tasks in particular. Adapted processes, practices, and tools are demanded to overcome these challenges. We report on an empirical study of...

This paper describes a system developed to create computer based jazz improvisation solos. The generation of the improvisation material uses interactive evolution, based on a dual genetic representation: a basic melody line representation, with energy constraints (“rubber band”) and a hierarchic structure of operators that processes the various parts of this basic melody. To be able to listen t...

Metaphor helps humans understand complex concepts by "mapping" them onto accessible concepts. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of using jazz as a metaphor to teach senior medical students improvisational communication skills, and to understand student learning experiences. The authors designed a month-long course that used jazz to teach improvisational communication. A s...

Musical rhythms performed by humans typically show temporal fluctuations. While they have been characterized in simple rhythmic tasks, it is an open question what is the nature of temporal fluctuations, when several musicians perform music jointly in all its natural complexity. To study such fluctuations in over 100 original jazz and rock/pop recordings played with and without metronome we deve...

To acquire a second language, one must develop an ear and tongue for the correct stress and intonation patterns of that language. In English language teaching, there is an effective method called Jazz Chants for working on the sound system. In this paper, we propose a method for predicting stressed words, which play a crucial role in Jazz Chants. The proposed method is specially designed for st...

This study explores the extent to which a large set of musically experienced listeners share understanding with a performing saxophone-piano duo, and with each other, of what happened in three improvisations on a jazz standard. In an online survey, 239 participants listened to audio recordings of three improvisations and rated their agreement with 24 specific statements that the performers and ...