UNIPDDepartment of Information Engineering
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ABOUT

PERSONAL DETAILS
Lungargine Del Piovego, 1, 35129 Padova PD, Italia
niccolo.pretto_at_dei.unipd.it
+39 049 827 6465

BIO

ABOUT ME

Niccolò Pretto completed his Ph.D. at the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova. His research is primarily focused on sound and music computing, and preservation and access to historical audio documents and cultural heritage in general. More specifically, his work consists of research and development of innovative methodologies, and applications to preserve, analyze, and experience musical heritage. His work is highly multidisciplinary; during his research he has collaborated with engineers (computer science, telecommunication, civil, and the like), as well as musicologists, archaeologists, archivists, psychologists, architects, earth scientists, and physicians. Additionally, his research has included the adoption of several technologies and methods extending to web and mobile interfaces, embedded systems, and machine learning techniques.


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RESUME

  • EDUCATION AND ACADEMIC POSITIONS
  • Dic 20
    Dic 22
    Padova

    SENIOR POSTDOC RESEARCH FELLOW
    (ASSEGNISTA DI RICERCA TIPO B SENIOR)

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA - DEI

    Department of Information Engineering,
    Project:
    IT4aREC – Innovative Tools and Algorithms for preserving and Archiving Analogue Audio RECordings
    Project funded by Department of Information Engineering on the "B Senior Initiative"
    Principal Investigator: Niccolò Pretto
    Supervisor: Prof. Sergio Canazza
  • Sep 20
    Dic 20
    Padova

    POSTDOC RESEARCH FELLOW
    (ASSEGNISTA DI RICERCA FSE TIPO A)

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA - DEI

    Department of Information Engineering,
    Project:
    FONTI 4.0 - Fruizione innovativa di fonti Orali digitalizzate mediante le Nuove Tecnologie dell'Industria creativa 4.0
    Supervisor: Prof. Sergio Canazza
  • Mar 20
    Sep 20
    Pisa

    POSTDOC RESEARCH FELLOW
    (ASSEGNISTA DI RICERCA TIPO A)

    NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF ITALY - CNR

    Institute for Computational Linguistics,
    Projects:
    - Valorization of archival heritage - Archivio VI.VO;
    - CLARIN-ERIC: Development of a data repository for storing and archiving linguistics data
    Supervisor: Dott. Monica Monachini
  • Oct 19
    Feb 20
    Padova

    POSTDOC RESEARCH FELLOW
    (BORSISTA DI RICERCA)

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA - DEI

    Department of Information Engineering,
    Project: Models and applications for the valorization of musical heritage.
    Supervisor: Prof. Sergio Canazza
  • Oct 18
    Sep 19
    Padova

    POSTDOC RESEARCH FELLOW
    (ASSEGNISTA DI RICERCA TIPO A)

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA - DEI

    Department of Information Engineering,
    Project: Using Speech Archives: Model and Implementation.
    Supervisor: Prof. Sergio Canazza
  • Oct 17
    Mar 18
    Barcelona

    VISITING RESEARCHER

    UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA - UPF

    Music Technology Group (MTG),
    Project: Collaboration on CompMusic ERC project: data-driven analysis of music corpora.
    Supervisor: Prof. Xavier Serra
  • Oct 15
    Sep 18
    Padova

    PHD STUDENT IN INFORMATION ENGINEERING

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA - DEI

    Department of Information Engineering,
    Thesis: Cultural Context-Aware Models and IT Applications for the Exploitation of Musical Heritage.
    Supervisor: Prof. Sergio Canazza
  • Apr 15
    Sep 15
    Padova

    RESEARCH ASSISTANT
    (ASSEGNISTA DI RICERCA TIPO A)

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA - DBC

    Department of Cultural Heritage,
    Project: Archaeology & Virtual Acoustics. A Pan flute from ancient Egypt.
    Supervisor: Prof. Paola Zanovello
  • Apr 14
    Mar 15
    Padova

    RESEARCH ASSISTANT
    (ASSEGNISTA DI RICERCA FSE TIPO A)

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA - DEI

    Department of Information Engineering,
    Project: Design and development of interactive mobile system for the access to digitized audio documents and artistic multimedia installation.
    Supervisor: Prof. Sergio Canazza
  • Oct 10
    Mar 14
    Padova

    MASTERS DEGREE IN COMPUTER SYSTEM ENGINEERING (LM-32)

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA - DEI

    Department of Information Engineering,
    Title of the thesis: A Model for Accessing Philologically to Audio Documents: a Web-Based Virtualization of a Gramophone to Replay Digitized Shellac Discs
    Supervisor: Prof. Sergio Canazza
  • Sep 06
    Jul 10
    Padova

    BACHELORS DEGREE IN COMPUTER SYSTEM ENGINEERING (Classe 9)

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA - DEI

    Department of Information Engineering,
    Title of the thesis: Vestition of topographic database of IGM using SLD
    Supervisor: Prof. Massimo Rumor
  • OTHER RELEVANT EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES
  • Jun 16
    Jul 16
    Limassol

    SMC 18 - SUMMERSCHOOL

    CYPRUS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, LIMASSOL, CYPRUS

    Summerschool of the 15th Sound and Music Computing Conference
    Main topics: Computational Ethnomusicology, Soundscape
  • Oct 16
    Dec 16
    Padova

    ACADEMIC ENGLISH COURSE (32 hours)

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA

    Academic English Course for PhD students, organized by Language Centre of University of Padova
  • Aug 16
    Aug 16
    Hamburg

    SMC 16 - SUMMERSCHOOL

    HAMBURG UNIVERSITY OF MUSIC AND THEATRE, GERMANY

    Summerschool of the 13th Sound and Music Computing Conference
    Main topics: Brain-Computer Music Interfaces; Artificial Neural Networks; Networked Music Performance
  • Jul 15
    Jul 15
    Maynooth

    SMC 15 - SUMMERSCHOOL

    UNIVERSITY OF MAYNOOTH, IRELAND

    Summerschool of the 12th Sound and Music Computing Conference
    Main topics: Sound Design for Media and enabling Audio Technologies
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PUBLICATIONS

PUBLICATIONS LIST
ALL
SORTING BY DATE
19 JUL 2020
International Conferences

ACOUSTIC EXPERIENCES FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE SITES: A PILOT EXPERIMENT ON SPONTANEOUS VISITORS’ INTEREST

PROCEEDINGS OF CULTURE AND COMPUTING. HCII 2020. LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE, vol 12215. Springer, Cham. (2020)

Vincenzo Norman Vitale, Marco Olivieri, Antonio Origlia, Niccolò Pretto, Antonio Rodà, Francesco Cutugno
24 JUN 2020
International Conferences

ACTIVE PRESERVATION OF ANALOGUE AUDIO DOCUMENTS: A SUMMARY OF THE LAST SEVEN YEARS OF DIGITIZATION AT CSC

PROCEEDINGS OF THE 17TH SOUND AND MUSIC COMPUTING CONFERENCE 2020, SMC'20,Torino, Italy (2020)

Niccolò Pretto, Alessandro Russo, Federica Bressan, Valentina Burini, Antonio Rodà, Sergio Canazza
07 JUN 2020
Conferences

L’INFORMATICA PER LA GESTIONE E LA CONSERVAZIONE DI INFORMAZIONI ACUSTICHE (MUSICA E VOCE)

STUDI AISV 6, Associazione Italiana Scienze della Voce, Arezzo, Italy (2020)

Alessandro Russo, Niccolò Pretto, Antonio Rodà, Sergio Canazza
29 MAY 2020
Journal Paper

TECHNOLOGY-ENHANCED INTERACTION WITH CULTURAL HERITAGE: AN ANTIQUE PAN FLUTE FROM EGYPT

ACM JOURNAL ON COMPUTING AND CULTURAL HERITAGE (JOCCH), VOL. 13, ISSUE 2

Niccolò Pretto, Edoardo Micheloni, Silvia Gasparotto, Carlo Fantozzi, Giovanni De Poli and Sergio Canazza
19 MAY 2019
Journal Paper

COMPUTING METHODOLOGIES SUPPORTING THE PRESERVATION OF ELECTROACOUSTIC MUSIC FROM ANALOG MAGNETIC TAPE

COMPUTER MUSIC JOURNAL, VOL. 42, ISSUE 4

Niccolò Pretto, Carlo Fantozzi, Edoardo Micheloni, Valentina Burini and Sergio Canazza
01 APR 2019
Journal Paper

ACTIVE PRESERVATION OF LUCIANO BERIO’S AUDIO DOCUMENTS                                           

MITTEILUNGEN DER PAUL SACHER STIFTUNG, VOL. 32, PP. 20-25

Alessandro Russo, Matthias Kassel, Sergio Canazza, and Niccolò Pretto
18 MAR 2019
Conferences

QUELLE VOCI POCO FA: L’INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE A CONTRASTARE L’ECLISSE DELLE MEMORIE SONORE

PROCEEDINGS OF 1ST CONVEGNO NAZIONALE CINI SULL'INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE, Ital-IA, Roma, Italy (2019)

Sergio Canazza, Carlo Fantozzi, Niccolò Pretto, Antonio Rodà, Anthony Chmiel, Emery Schubert
14 FEB 2019
Thesis

CULTURAL CONTEXT-AWARE MODELS AND IT APPLICATIONS FOR THE EXPLOITATION OF MUSICAL HERITAGE

PHD THESIS IN INFORMATION ENGINEERING, DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION ENGINEERING OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA, Supervisor: Sergio Canazza

Niccolò Pretto
01 DEC 2018
Journal Paper

PAMU: A MULTIMEDIA PARK TO ENHANCE THE RENAISSANCE WALLS OF PADUA

DISEGNARECON, VOL. 11, ISSUE 21

Emanuela De Feo, Eleonora Angela Venier, Alessandro Russo, Matteo Breschigliaro and Niccolò Pretto
28 NOV 2018
International Conferences

THE "GOOD OR BAD?" GAME: STIMULATING LISTENING SKILLS THROUGH PLAYFUL ENGAGEMENT

PROCEEDINGS OF THE 4TH EAI INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SMART OBJECTS AND TECHNOLOGIES FOR SOCIAL GOOD, Goodtechs'18, Bologna, Italy (2018)

Marcella Mandanici, Federico Altieri, Niccolò Pretto, Matteo Munaro, Sergio Canazza and Emanuele Menegatti
28 SEP 2018
International Conferences

AN OPEN CORPUS FOR THE COMPUTATIONAL RESEARCH OF ARAB-ANDALUSIAN MUSIC

PROCEEDINGS OF THE 5TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DIGITAL LIBRARIES FOR MUSICOLOGY, DLfM'18, Paris, France (2018)

Rafael Caro Repetto, Niccolò Pretto, Amin Chaachoo, Baris Bozkurt and Xavier Serra
02 JUL 2018
International Conferences

NAWBA RECOGNITION FOR ARAB-ANDALUSIAN MUSIC USING TEMPLATES FROM MUSIC SCORES

PROCEEDINGS OF THE 15TH SOUND AND MUSIC COMPUTING CONFERENCE 2018, SMC'18, Limassol, Cyprus (2018)

Niccolò Pretto, Baris Bozkurt, Rafael Caro Repetto and Xavier Serra
01 FEB 2018
Journal Paper

STAY TRUE TO THE SOUND OF HISTORY: PHILOLOGY, PHYLOGENETICS AND INFORMATION ENGINEERING IN MUSICOLOGY

APPLIED SCIENCES, VOL. 8, ISSUE 2 - PP. 226-240

Sebastiano Verde, Niccolò Pretto, Simone Milani and Sergio Canazza
14 NOV 2017
International Conferences

A STEP TOWARD AI TOOLS FOR QUALITY CONTROL AND MUSICOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF DIGITIZED ANALOGUE RECORDINGS: RECOGNITION OF AUDIO TAPE EQUALIZATIONS

PROCEEDINGS OF THE 11TH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE, AI*CH'17, Bari, Italy (2017)

Edoardo Micheloni, Niccolò Pretto, Canazza Sergio
28 FEB 2017
Journal Paper

TAPE MUSIC ARCHIVES: FROM PRESERVATION TO ACCESS                                            

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON DIGITAL LIBRARIES, VOL. 18, ISSUE 3 - SPRINGER

Carlo Fantozzi, Federica Bressan, Niccolò Pretto and Sergio Canazza
28 SEP 2016
Conferences

INSTALLAZIONI INTERATTIVE PER LA VALORIZZAZIONE DI STRUMENTI MUSICALI ANTICHI: IL FLAUTO DI PAN DEL MUSEO DI SCIENZE ARCHEOLOGICHE E D’ARTE DELL’UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA

PROCEEDINGS OF THE XXI COLLOQUIUM OF MUSICAL INFORMATICS, XXI CIM, Cagliari, Italy (2016)

Edoardo Micheloni, Niccolò Pretto, Federico Avanzini, Sergio Canazza and Antonio Rodà
31 AUG 2016
International Conferences

VIRTUAL RECONSTRUCTION OF AN ANCIENT GREEK PAN FLUTE

PROCEEDINGS OF THE 13TH SOUND AND MUSIC COMPUTING CONFERENCE 2016, SMC'16, Hamburg, Germany (2016)

Federico Avanzini, Canazza Sergio, Giovanni De Poli, Carlo Fantozzi, Edoardo Micheloni, Niccolò Pretto, Antonio Roda', Silvia Gasparotto, Giuseppe Salemi
1 OCT 2015
Journal Paper

ACCESSING TAPE MUSIC DOCUMENTS ON MOBILE DEVICES

ACM TRANSACTIONS ON MULTIMEDIA COMPUTING, COMMUNICATIONS, AND APPLICATIONS (TOMM)

Sergio Canazza, Carlo Fantozzi and Niccolò Pretto
30 JUL 2015
International Conferences

ARCHAEOLOGY AND VIRTUAL ACOUSTICS. A PAN FLUTE FROM ANCIENT EGYPT

PROCEEDINGS OF THE 12TH SOUND AND MUSIC COMPUTING CONFERENCE, SMC'15, Maynooth, Ireland (2015)

Federico Avanzini, Sergio Canazza, Giovanni De Poli, Carlo Fantozzi, Niccolò Pretto, Antonio Rodà, Ivana Angelini, Cinzia Bettin et al.
20 OCT 2014
Conferences

REWIND: SIMULAZIONE DI UN’ESPERIENZA D’ASCOLTO STORICAMENTE FEDELE DI DISCHI FONOGRAFICI DIGITALIZZATI

PROCEEDINGS OF THE XX COLLOQUIUM OF MUSICAL INFORMATICS, XX CIM, Roma, Italy (2014)

Niccolò Pretto and Sergio Canazza
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RESEARCH

RESEARCH INTERESTS

PRESERVATION OF HISTORICAL AUDIO DOCUMENTS

Since their introduction in the late 19th Century, audio recordings have provided unmediated documentation about cultural identity, social and artistic activities, and soundscape ecology. They have become a priceless source of information for a number of research areas such as linguistics, anthropology, and musicology. The process of physical degradation that characterizes all types of audio carriers can be slowed down by means of correct preservation policies, but cannot be fully stopped. Therefore, the survival of the contained information is possible only through other digital means. Preservation does not coincide with the digitization of the audio signals alone, but also involves metadata and ancillary information. Furthermore, every historical audio document can be associated with the physical carrier on which it is recorded, and to its audio player (gramophone, tape recorder/player) defining the listening experience. Thus, the preservation of historical audio recordings is a broad and complex research area that requires a multidisciplinary approach involving competence in computer science, communications and electronic engineering, musicology, chemistry, archiving methods, and philology. My research interests are primarily focused on the development of web and mobile interfaces for philological access to recordings. The objective is to aid musicological studies using virtualization of an audio player and physical carrier to recreate the listening conditions of the time. Currently, my research also involves the automatic extraction of interesting features using machine-learning techniques from audio and video and data-driven analysis on music corpora, with the aim to support musicologists and audio technicians in their work. These works are set in the research fields of sound and music computing and computational musicology.

INTERACTIVE MUSEUM INSTALLATIONS FOR HISTORICAL MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

In recent decades the role of many museums has evolved from preserving and displaying artifacts to that of institutions focused on the education and entertainment of visitors. To this end, museum curators strive to design and implement exhibitions that offer an educational yet also enjoyable experience. For these reasons interactive multimedia installations, augmented and virtual reality applications, and mobile apps are increasingly widespread. Often historical or modern musical instruments are presented in museums and exhibitions. While there are numerous instrument types, a visitor must physically interact with them in order to properly understand them. Usually this is impossible as preservation policies make the artifact inaccessible, or because degradation makes the instrument unusable. The proposed approach is to transpose the concepts of passive and active preservation from historical audio documents to the field of physical artifacts and musical instruments. In this context, passive preservation is meant to preserve the original instruments from external agents without altering their components, while active preservation involves a new design of the instruments using new components or a virtual simulation of the instruments. The project "Archaeology and virtual acoustics" provided an interesting case study. It concerns an exceptionally well-preserved ancient pan flute, most likely of Greek origin, recovered in Egypt in the 1930’s and now exhibited in the Museum of Archaeological Sciences and Art (MSA), University of Padova. It was during this project, that I entered this multidisciplinary research area, specifically by managing the development of an interactive museum installation that virtually recreates the instrument, and communicates different aspects related to history, iconography, acoustics, musicology, etc. This installation is now permanently exhibited at MSA.

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TEACHING

  • CURRENT
  • 2020
    2014

    ASSISTANT SUPERVISOR FOR 29 MASTERS AND BACHELORS THESES

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA

    Supervisors:
    - prof. Sergio Canazza;
    - prof. Carlo Fantozzi.
  • 2020
    2015

    PROJECTS TUTOR - Course: SOUND AND MUSIC COMPUTING

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA

    Masters Degree in Information Engineering
    - prof. Federico Avanzini
    - prof. Sergio Canazza
    - prof. Giovanni De Poli
    - prof. Antonio Rodà
  • 2020
    2019

    TUTORIAL TUTOR - Course: INTRODUCTORY COMPUTER SCIENCE (20 hours)

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA

    Bachelors Degrees in Computer Science Engineering
    Course 1: prof. Cinzia Pizzi
    Course 2: prof. Sergio Canazza
    Course 3: prof. Adriano Luchetta
    Course 4: prof. Laura Bazzanella
  • PREVIOUS EXPERIENCES
  • 2019
    2018

    TUTORIAL TUTOR - Course: EMBEDDED SYSTEM PROGRAMMING (32 hours)

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA

    Masters and Bachelors Degrees in Computer Science Engineering
    prof. Carlo Fantozzi
  • 2018
    2017

    LAB. TUTOR - Course: COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE (94 hours)

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA

    Bachelors Degree in Information Engineering
    Course 1: prof. Matteo Comin
    Course 2: prof. Emanuele Menegatti
    Course 3: prof. Antonio Rodà
    Course 4: prof. Francesco Silvestri
  • 2017
    2016

    LAB. TUTOR - Course: INTRODUCTORY COMPUTER SCIENCE (100 hours)

    UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA

    Bachelors Degree in Information Engineering
    Course 1: prof. Federico Avanzini
    Course 2: prof. Sergio Canazza
    Course 3: prof. Marcello Dalpasso
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WORKS

ARCHAEOLOGY AND VIRTUAL ACOUSTIC




HISTORICAL AUDIO DOCUMENTS




ARAB-ANDALUSIAN CORPUS

Four notebooks to download and analyse data and metadata from the Arab Andalusian Corpus of Dunya have been developed. The software is available at the following link: https://github.com/MTG/andalusian-corpus-notebooks This repository contains four notebooks:

  • Corpus.ipynb: to download data and metadata from the Corpus, to compute the pitch profile, distribution and the tonic frequency of each recording;
  • Metadata.ipynb: to group, visualize and analyse metadata;
  • NawbaPitchAnalysis.ipynb: to visualize pitch distribution and note/class distribution of a single recording or of a group of them.
  • NawbaRecognition.ipynb: to compute several experiments to evaluate the performance on nawba recognition of algorithms based on templates derived from scores.
The dataset is available at the following link: https://github.com/MTG/andalusian-corpus-notebooks

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CONTACT

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Send me a mail at niccolo.pretto_at_dei.unipd.it

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