Juan Pablo Bello

Music Information Retrieval, Machine Listening, Audio Signal Processing

Research

I am the director of MARL and principal investigator of its Music and Sound Informatics group

Motivation:

My primary scholarly interest is in endowing computers with listening skills, such as the ability to automatically recognize tonal, rhythmic, structural and emotional information from recorded music, to identify sound sources in urban and natural environments, and to characterize the similarities that exist between sounds and musical pieces. Developing listening machines has many potential applications, including the monitoring of urban noise, the identification of bird species by their vocalization, the creation of music recommendation services and personalized radio streams, the automation of tasks in the recording studio or the development of interactive music systems for performance and composition. My work sits at the intersection of the fields of electronic engineering, computer science, music and acoustics, and seeks to advance the state of the art in all of them.

For a complete list of publications please click here.

Active Projects:
  • SONYC: a cyber-physical system for the monitoring, analysis and mitigation of urban noise pollution.
  • BirdVox: machine listening for the detection and classification of avian flight calls in natural environments.
  • Rhythm: computational approaches to the analysis of rhythm across musical cultures.
Grants and Awards:
  • Bello, J.P., “PFI-TT: Acoustic Continuous Condition Monitoring of Manufacturing Machinery”. National Science Foundation, Grant # 1827523: $200,000. Awarded July, 2018
  • Bello, J.P., “I-Corps: Embedded Machine Listening for Smart Acoustic Monitoring”. National Science Foundation, Grant # 1759592: $50,000. Awarded November, 2017
  • Guedes, C., Toussaint, G., Russell, B., Rowe, R., and Bello, J.P., “Computationally-Engaged Approaches to Rhythm and Music Heritage: Generation, Analysis, and Performance Practice”. NYU Abu-Dhabi Research Enhancement Fund: $232,882. Awarded July, 2017
  • Bello, J.P., Arora, A., DuBois, L., Nov, O., and Silva, C. “CPS: Frontier: SONYC: A Cyber-Physical System for Monitoring, Analysis and Mitigation of Urban Noise Pollution”. National Science Foundation (NSF), Awarded May, 2016 ($4,628,000).
  • Kelling, S., Bello, J.P., Farnsworth, A., and Klinck, H. “BIGDATA: Collaborative Research: IA: BirdVox: Automating Acoustic Monitoring of Migrating Bird Species”. National Science Foundation (NSF), Awarded September, 2016 ($1,559,400 total — $612,383 to NYU).
  • Bello, J.P., iHeartMedia Unrestricted Gift for Music Informatics Research: $20,000. Awarded June, 2016.
  • Rowe, R., Bello, J.P., Guedes, C., and Toussaint, G., “Creation and Analysis of a Digital Repository of Middle Eastern Music”. NYU Global Seed Grant for Collab- orative Research: $130,000. Awarded February, 2016.
  • Bello, J.P. and Kelling, S. “BirdVox: Automatic Bird Species Identification from Flight Calls”. Google Faculty Award. Awarded February, 2016 ($53,450).
  • Guedes, C., Bello, J.P., Rowe, R. and Toussaint, G. “Cross-disciplinary and Multi-Cultural Perspectives on Musical Rhythm”. NYU Abu-Dhabi Research Enhancement Fund, Awarded July, 2014 ($350,000.)
  • Richard, G. and Bello, J.P. Deep Learning for Multiple Instrument Identification in Recorded Music. Télécom ParisTech, Futur et Ruptures program. Awarded November, 2013 ($50,000).
  • Bello, J.P. US Fulbright Research Scholar – Multidisciplinary Studies. Institute of International Education, Council for International Exchange of Scholars. Awarded April, 2013 ($25,000).
  • Bello, J.P., DuBois, R.L., Park, T.H., Roginska, A., and Silva, C. Acquisition, Analysis, Classification, and Visualization of Urban Noise. NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress, Seed fund. Awarded April, 2013 ($251,057).
  • Bello, J.P. National Science Foundation, REU Supplement to CAREER Award. Awarded May 2010, 11, 12 and 13 ($60,512). Best Special Session Paper, 11th International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (co-authored with E.J. Humphrey). Boca Raton, FL, USA.
  • Best Paper Award at the 11th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (co-authored with R.J. Weiss). Utrecht, The Netherlands.
  • Bello, J.P. Goddard Faculty Fellowship Award, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University. Awarded October, 2009 ($4,000).
  • Rowe, R., Anderson, J., Bello, J.P., Farbood, M., Mavromatis, P., Roginszka, A. and Vishio, A. Music and Audio Research Laboratory, Working Research Group, Humanities Initiative, New York University. Awarded March, 2009 ($10,000).
  • Bello, J.P. CAREER: Analyzing the Sequential Structure of Music, National Science Foundation (NSF), Awarded February, 2009 ($499,992).
  • Rowe, R., Skelton, C., Bello, J.P., DuBois, L., Farbood, M., Isbister, K. and Roginszka, A. Emotive Association in Multimedia, NYU-Poly Seed Grant Competition, New York University. Awarded January, 2009 ($100,000).
  • Bello, J.P., Rohmann, G. and Underwood, K. Improving Access to Digital Music through Content-based Analysis, Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Awarded September, 2008 ($615,405).
  • Bello, J. P. Modeling Harmony in Music Signals using Hidden Markov Models. University Research Challenge Grant, New York University. Awarded May, 2007 ($15,000).
  • Bello, J. P. Machine Listening on the Studio. Technology Award, Steinhardt School Challenge Grants, New York University. Awarded May, 2007 ($15,000).
  • Bello, J. P. On the Automated Characterization of Music-based Similarity from Audio. Summer Grant Development Award, Steinhardt School Challenge Grants, New York University. Awarded May, 2007 ($5,000).
  • Sandler, M., Casey, M., Plumbley, M., Crawford, T., Wiggins, G., Bello, J. P.,Abdallah, S. and Dovey, M. OMRAS2: A Distributed Research Environment for Music Informatics and Computational Musicology. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), UK. Awarded September, 2006. Note: I stopped being a co-investigator in this proposal when I moved to New York.
  • Plumbley, M., Bello, J. P. and Marolt, M. Estimation of Melody from Audio using Harmonic and Rhythmic Information. Royal Society International Incoming Short Visit grant, UK. Awarded August, 2005.
  • My doctoral work was funded by scholarships by the Fundación Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho, Caracas, Venezuela (1999-2000), the Online Music Recognition and Searching Project (2000-2002), and Queen Mary, University of London (2002-2003).