Dr Charalampos Saitis
Lecturer in Digital Music Processing
School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science
Queen Mary University of London
Queen Mary University of London
Research
Perception, cognition & aesthetics of sound, Crossmodal & multisensory perception involving sound, Enabling digital audio with an understanding of how we listen, Modelling human values (& biases) with digital music data, Digital tools for education, outreach, & research
Interests
My research focuses on cognitive representations of timbre and metaphor, including digital interactive cross-sensory games for public engagement and in-the-wild collection of behavioural data. I am a founding member of the International Conference on Timbre and acted as co-editor for the scientific volumes Timbre: Acoustics, Perception, & Cognition (2019) and Musical Haptics (2018). I am also interested in data-driven approaches to modelling human values (and biases) using multimodal music data (Turing Fellow 2021–2023).Publications
Publications of specific relevance to the Centre for Multimodal AI2024
Marinelli L, Lucht P and Saitis C (2024). A multimodal understanding of the role of sound and music in gendered toy marketing. PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science (PLoS) vol. 19 (11) 06-11-2024
Zhang J, Fazekas G and Saitis C (2024). Composer Style-specific Symbolic Music Generation Using Vector Quantized Discrete Diffusion Models. IEEE International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP) 22 Sep 2024 - 25 Sep 2024. 22-09-2024
Saitis C, Del Sette BM, Shier J, Tian H, Zheng S, Skach S, Reed CN and Ford C (2024). Timbre Tools: Ethnographic Perspectives on Timbre and Sonic Cultures in Hackathon Designs. Audio Mostly 2024 - Explorations in Sonic Cultures. 18-09-2024
Zheng S, Del Sette BM, Saitis C, Xambo Sedo A and Bryan-Kinns N (2024). Building Sketch-to-Sound Mapping with Unsupervised Feature Extraction and Interactive Machine Learning. New Interfaces for Musical Expression Utrecht, The Netherlands 4 Sep 2024 - 6 Sep 2024. 04-09-2024
Preniqi V, Ghinassi I, Ive J, Saitis C and Kalimeri K (2024). MoralBERT: A Fine-Tuned Language Model for Capturing Moral Values in Social Discussions. Proceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Information Technology for Social Good. 04-09-2024
Saitis C and Wallmark Z (2024). Timbral brightness perception investigated through multimodal interference. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, Springer Nature vol. 86 (6), 1835-1845. 01-08-2024
Shier J, Saitis C, Robertson A and McPherson A (2024). Real-time Timbre Remapping with Differentiable DSP. 05-07-2024
Williams A, Tian H, Lattner S, Barthet M and Saitis C (2024). Deep Learning-based Audio Representations for the Analysis and Visualisation of Electronic Dance Music DJ Mixes. AES International Symposium on AI and the Musician Boston, MA, USA 6 Jun 2024 - 8 Jun 2024. 06-06-2024
Marinelli L and Saitis C (2024). Explainable Modeling of Gender-Targeting Practices in Toy Advertising Sound and Music. ICASSP 2024 Workshop XAI-SA Seoul 14 Apr 2024 - 19 Apr 2024. 14-04-2024
Pàmies-Vilà M and Saitis C (2024). Timbral effects of col legno tratto techniques on bowed cello sounds. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Acoustical Society of America (ASA) vol. 155 (3_Supplement), a60-a60. 01-03-2024
Zhang J, Fazekas G and Saitis C (2024). Composer Style-Specific Symbolic Music Generation using Vector Quantized Discrete Diffusion Models. 2024 IEEE 34th International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP). 25-01-2024
Hayes B, Shier J, Fazekas G, McPherson A and Saitis C (2024). A review of differentiable digital signal processing for music and speech synthesis. Frontiers in Signal Processing, Frontiers vol. 3 11-01-2024
2023
Preniqi V, Kalimeri K and Saitis C (2023). Soundscapes of morality: Linking music preferences and moral values through lyrics and audio. PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science (PLoS) vol. 18 (11) 29-11-2023
Marinelli L, FAZEKAS G and Saitis C (2023). Gender-Coded Sound: Analysing the Gendering of Music in Toy Commercials via Multi-Task Learning. 24th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference Milan 5 Nov 2023 - 9 Nov 2023. 05-11-2023
Del Sette BM, Carnes D and Saitis C (2023). Sound of Care: Towards a Co-Operative AI Digital Pain Companion to Support People with Chronic Primary Pain. Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. 14-10-2023
Shier J, Caspe F, Robertson A, Sandler M, Mcpherson A and Saitis C (2023). Differentiable Modelling of Percussive Audio with Transient and Spectral Synthesis. 10th Convention of the European Acoustics Association (Forum Acusticum) 11 Sep 2023 - 15 Sep 2023. 11-09-2023
Hayes B, Saitis C and Fazekas G (2023). Sinusoidal Frequency Estimation by Gradient Descent. ICASSP 2023 - 2023 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP). 10-06-2023
Diaz R, Hayes B, Saitis C, Fazekas G and Sandler M (2023). Rigid-Body Sound Synthesis with Differentiable Modal Resonators. ICASSP 2023 - 2023 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP). 10-06-2023
Diaz Fernandez R, Saitis C and Sandler M (2023). Interactive Neural Resonators. International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. 31-05-2023
Reymore L, Noble J, Saitis C, Traube C and Wallmark Z (2023). Timbre Semantic Associations Vary Both Between and Within Instruments. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, University of California Press vol. 40 (3), 253-274. 01-02-2023
Preniqi V, Kalimeri K and Saitis C (2023). Modelling Moral Traits with Music Listening Preferences and Demographics. Music in the AI Era 183-194. 01-01-2023
2022
Bonnici RS, Benning M and Saitis C (2022). Timbre Transfer with Variational Auto Encoding and Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Networks. 2022 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN). 23-07-2022
Hayes B, Saitis C and Fazekas G (2022). Disembodied Timbres: A Study on Semantically Prompted FM Synthesis. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, Audio Engineering Society vol. 70 (5), 373-391. 11-05-2022
Delgado A, Demirel E, Subramanian V, Saitis C and Sandler M (2022). Deep Embeddings for Robust User-Based Amateur Vocal Percussion Classification. 19th Sound and Music Computing Conferences. 01-01-2022
Hayes B, Saitis C and Fazekas G (2022). timbre.fun: A gamified interactive system for crowdsourcing a timbre semantic vocabulary. 01-01-2022
2021
Hayes B, Saitis C and Fazekas G (2021). Neural Waveshaping Synthesis. Proceedings of the 22nd International Society for Music Information Retrieval Online 8 Nov 2021 - 12 Nov 2021. 07-11-2021
Vahidi C, Fazekas G and Saitis C (2021). A Modulation Front-End for Music Audio Tagging. The International Joint Conference on Neural Networks 18 Jul 2021 - 22 Jul 2021. 18-07-2021
Delgado A, Saitis C and Sandler M (2021). Phoneme Mappings for Online Vocal Percussion Transcription. 01-01-2021
Lam JR and Saitis C (2021). The Timbre Explorer: A Synthesizer Interface for Educational Purposes and Perceptual Studies. International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. 01-01-2021
Delgado A, McDonald ST, Xu N, Saitis C and Sandler M (2021). Learning Models for Query by Vocal Percussion: A Comparative Study. 01-01-2021
2020
Saitis C and Siedenburg K (2020). Brightness perception for musical instrument sounds: Relation to timbre dissimilarity and source-cause categories. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Acoustical Society of America vol. 148 (4), 2256-2266. 21-10-2020
Delgado Luezas A, Saitis C and Sandler M (2020). Spectral and Temporal Timbral Cues of Vocal Imitations of Drum Sounds. 2nd International Conference on Timbre. 04-09-2020
Vahidi C, Fazekas G, Saitis C and Palladini A (2020). Timbre Space Representation of a Subtractive Synthesizer. International Conference on Timbre (Timbre 2020) 3 Sep 2020 - 4 Sep 2020. 03-09-2020
Hayes B and Saitis C (2020). There’s more to timbre than musical instruments: semantic dimensions of FM sounds. Timbre 2020 Thessaloniki (Online) 3 Sep 2020 - 4 Sep 2020. 03-09-2020
ZACHARAKIS A, Hayes B, Saitis C and Pastiadis K (2020). Evidence for timbre space robustness to an uncontrolled online stimulus presentation. Timbre 2020 Thessaloniki (Online) 3 Sep 2020 - 4 Sep 2020. 03-09-2020
Marinelli L, Lykartsis A, Weinzierl S and Saitis C (2020). Musical dynamics classification with CNN and modulation spectra. 17th Sound and Music Computing Conference Torino 24 Aug 2020 - 26 Aug 2020. 24-08-2020
Saitis C, Weinzierl S, von Kriegstein K, Ystad S and Cuskley C (2020). Timbre semantics through the lens of crossmodal correspondences: A new way of asking old questions. Acoustical Science and Technology, Acoustical Society of Japan vol. 41 (1), 365-368. 01-01-2020
2019
Siedenburg K, Saitis C, McAdams S, Popper AN and Fay RR (2019). Timbre: Acoustics, Perception, and Cognition. 15-05-2019
Saitis C and Weinzierl S (2019). The Semantics of Timbre. Timbre: Acoustics, Perception, and Cognition 119-149. 01-01-2019
Caetano M, Saitis C and Siedenburg K (2019). Audio Content Descriptors of Timbre. Timbre: Acoustics, Perception, and Cognition 297-333. 01-01-2019
Siedenburg K, Saitis C and McAdams S (2019). The Present, Past, and Future of Timbre Research. Timbre: Acoustics, Perception, and Cognition 1-19. 01-01-2019
2018
Saitis C and Kalimeri K (2018). Multimodal Classification of Stressful Environments in Visually Impaired Mobility Using EEG and Peripheral Biosignals. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing 22-08-2018
Saitis C, Jarvelainen H and Fritz C (2018). The Role of Haptic Cues in Musical Instrument Quality Perception. Musical Haptics 73-93. 03-05-2018
Saitis C, Parvez MZ and Kalimeri K (2018). Cognitive Load Assessment from EEG and Peripheral Biosignals for the Design of Visually Impaired Mobility Aids. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing vol. 2018 28-02-2018
2017
Saitis C and Weinzierl S (2017). Concepts of timbre emerging from musician linguistic expressions. 01-05-2017
Saitis C, Fritz C, Scavone GP, Guastavino C and Dubois D (2017). Perceptual evaluation of violins: A psycholinguistic analysis of preference verbal descriptions by experienced musicians. J Acoust Soc Am, Acoustical Society of America vol. 141 (4), 2746-2757. 19-04-2017
Saitis C (2017). Fractal Art: Closer to Heaven? Modern Mathematics, the Art of Nature, and the Nature of Art. Aesthetics of Interdisciplinarity: Art and Mathematics 153-163. 01-01-2017
2016
Kalimeri K and Saitis C (2016). Exploring multimodal biosignal features for stress detection during indoor mobility. Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction. 31-10-2016
Spagnol S, Johannesson OI, Kristjansson A, Unnthorsson R, Saitis C, Kalimeri K, Bujacz M and Moldoveanu A (2016). Model-based obstacle sonification for the navigation of visually impaired persons. 01-01-2016
Bujacz M, Kropidlowski K, Ivanica G, Moldoveanu A, Saitis C, Csapo A, Wersenyi G, Spagnol S, Johannesson OI, Unnthorsson R, Rotnicki M and Witek P (2016). Sound of Vision - Spatial Audio Output and Sonification Approaches. Computers Helping People with Special Needs 202-209. 01-01-2016
Saitis C and Kalimeri K (2016). Identifying Urban Mobility Challenges for the Visually Impaired with Mobile Monitoring of Multimodal Biosignals. Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Users and Context Diversity 616-627. 01-01-2016
2015
Mansour H, Fréour V, Saitis C and Scavone GP (2015). Post-Classification of Nominally Identical Steel-String Guitars Using Bridge Admittances. Acta Acustica, Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft mbH vol. 101 (2), 394-407. 01-03-2015
Saitis C, Scavone GP, Fritz C and Giordano BL (2015). Effect of Task Constraints on the Perceptual Evaluation of Violins. Acta Acustica, Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft mbH vol. 101 (2), 382-393. 01-03-2015
2014
Saitis C, Hankinson A and Fujinaga I (2014). Correcting Large-Scale OMR Data with Crowdsourcing. Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Digital Libraries for Musicology. 12-09-2014
Saitis C, Fritz C and Scavone GP (2014). Categorization and lexicon in verbal descriptions of violin quality by performers. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Acoustical Society of America (ASA) vol. 135 (4), 2214-2214. 01-04-2014
2013
Saitis C, Scavone GP, Fritz C and Giordano BL (2013). Perceptual evaluation of violins: A comparison of intra-individual agreement in playing vs. listening tasks for the case of richness. 02-06-2013
Saitis C, Scavone GP, Fritz C and Giordano BL (2013). Perceptual evaluation of violins: A comparison of intra-individual agreement in playing vs. listening tasks for the case of richness. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Acoustical Society of America (ASA) vol. 133 (5), 3365-3365. 01-05-2013
2012
Saitis C, Giordano BL, Fritz C and Scavone GP (2012). Perceptual evaluation of violins: A quantitative analysis of preference judgments by experienced players. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Acoustical Society of America (ASA) vol. 132 (6), 4002-4012. 01-12-2012
2011
Saitis C, Giordano BL, Fritz C and Scavone GP (2011). Investigating the origin of inter-individual differences in the preference for violins. 01-12-2011
Saitis C, Giordano BL, Fritz C and Scavone GP (2011). Aspects of experimental design for the perceptual evaluation of violin qualities. 01-09-2011
2010
Saitis C, Scavone GP, Fritz C and Giordano BL (2010). Evaluating violin quality: How consistent are skilled players? The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Acoustical Society of America (ASA) vol. 128 (4), 2284-2284. 01-10-2010
2009
Saitis C, Orr S and van Walstijn M (2009). Physical modeling of the piano: An investigation into the effect of string stiffness on the hammer string interaction. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Acoustical Society of America (ASA) vol. 125 (4), 2684-2684. 01-04-2009
Grants
Grants of specific relevance to the Centre for Multimodal AISmart EQ: Personalising Audio with Context-aware AI using Listener Preferences and Psychological FactorsGyorgy Fazekas and Charalampos Saitis
£172,101 Yamaha Corporation (23-09-2024 - 22-09-2028)
UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Artificial Intelligence and MusicSimon Dixon, Emmanouil Benetos, Nicholas Bryan-Kinns, Mark Sandler, Andrew McPherson, Mathieu Barthet, Gyorgy Fazekas, Ekaterina Ivanova, Anna Xambo Sedo and Charalampos Saitis
£6,519,934 EPSRC Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (01-07-2019 - 31-08-2028)