Ahead of Abbey Road's first ever Hackathon, taking place on the weekend of 10 / 11 November, Abbey Road Red's Hash Riaz was invited to Deezer's Hacking Audio Music Research (HAMR) 2018 Hackathon at its Paris HQ, as part of ISMIR 2018, the International Society of Music Information Retrieval's yearly conference. ISMIR is the worlds largest research forum on processing, organising and accessing music-related data. The annual ISMIR conference is a place for researchers to gather, share research and network. The two-day hackathon brought together a global community of music information retrieval specialists and researchers to collaborate on innovative research. Hash was invited to attend the hackathon and hand-out some special Abbey Road prizes.

The participants were split into small teams with some choosing to work alone, before presenting their research project at the end of the two days. And the winners were:

● Best Code: FaceJam - Chris Trailie from Duke University presented FaceJam, which used image processing along with music information retrieval (MIR) techniques to clone his own facial expressions onto a picture of Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock.
● Best Research Direction: Modelling Meter Changes - This was a system that would automatically identify odd or incorrect time signatures within a piece of music. That's a tricky undertaking because some songs switch time signatures during certain passages and these changes must be identified as positive events by the system if accurate analysis is to take place and the odd/incorrect time changes are to be correctly highlighted.
● Best Documentation: Neural Bubble- Neural Bubble Beat created a neural network which analysed songs, detecting key moments like downbeats with an accompanying visual representation of the network to show thought patterns.
● Deezer Prize: Quantifying Music Taste - The special Deezer prize was awarded to a team of PhD students proposing a system which would analyse not only what kind of music users like but how much wider they can wander in their exploration of other styles.
● Abbey Road Prizes: Golden ticket to Abbey Road Red's Hackathon - Giorgia Cantisani was the lucky winner of the Abbey Road Golden Ticket to Ride, which gives her a free Eurostar ticket from Paris to London to attend Abbey Roads inaugural Hackathon on 10 / 11 November.
● Abbey Road Merchandise - Chris Trailie picked up the Abbey Road merchandise gifts for best code and literally putting a smile on peoples faces with FaceJam!

Hash said: "It was inspiring to see a range of international students and professionals working together on forward-thinking projects and ideas around music information retrieval. All the ideas were novel and interesting, and it was a pleasure to attend and be involved. Thanks to the Deezer team for being fantastic hosts over the course of the event". Hash caught up with event organiser Manuel Moussallam who heads up Deezer's RD department in Paris, who said: "We were very happy at Deezer to welcome the participants. I believe there were some interesting research ideas and fruitful collaborations that emerged. A particularly satisfying fact for me was that many of our guests were young researchers attending their first ISMIR conference. I'm quite impressed by this new generation and I look forward to working with them in the future". Read more from Manuel here.