The ‘Modernising European Higher Music Education through Improvisation - METRIC’ project wants to contribute to improving the employability of future music graduates through the artistic, pedagogical and entrepreneurial development of higher music education studies in the area of improvisation as a response to the rapidly changing employment situation in the music profession. In performance curricula of higher music education institutions all over the world, improvisation training is increasingly seen as a crucial component because of the following reasons: - Changes in the role of music in society lead to rapid developments in the music profession. The increased interest in a variety of musical styles by music listeners and a decrease of state support to arts generally are characterise these developments. The future music profession needs musicians that are flexible in working methods, musical styles and able to work in different professional contexts. Improvisation is seen as a significant skill in the music profession, giving the musicians better opportunities for finding jobs in a wider spectrum of music styles and contexts as artists, teachers and community musicians. - Improvisation is seen as a crucial pedagogical tool for the training of transversal skills, which are fundamental for future musicians. Reflective attitude, peer-learning and team working are basic principles for improvisation practice and these are exactly the skills that will support the musicians to prepare themselves to be reflective participants in their portfolio careers. Therefore improvisation is a vital tool for modernizing higher education in the area of classical music. To support this, strong courses on improvisation need to be developed in higher music education institutions. The project brought together students, teachers and leading experts from different musical backgrounds in 14 European higher music education institutions to develop new and effective approaches and methods on the teaching of improvisation, both from an artistic and pedagogical as well as a professional integration point of view. The teaching staff was updated or re-trained with information on innovative teaching and learning methods, leading to higher quality teaching. This resulted in an increased awareness and understanding of the potential of improvisation in the participating institutions and, through a set of targeted dissemination activities, the higher music education sector at large. Eventually, this will lead to improved employment opportunities for future music students. The project implemented the following activities: 1. A series of working group meetings twice a year to develop intellectual outputs in the form of new teaching and learning (online), and assessment methodologies in improvisation. 2. The organisation of 4 Intensive Study Programmes (ISPs) where students and teachers met around specific themes. The role of these ISPs was be central to the developmental function of the project, as they further helped develop and test the intellectual outputs developed in the working groups. 3. A joint staff training event for teachers took place in the first year of the project where different groups of teachers addressed new teaching and learning (online) methodologies and assessment approaches and compared international standards of educational and artistic outcomes. Teaching staff was also trained to become international external examiners for assessments in improvisation. 4. The development of joint European Modules in Improvisation through a series of working group meetings. These joint European Modules ensured that the expertise available in the partner institutions would be pooled into a programme of the highest educational and artistic quality, and provide future sustainability to the activities through a structured future use of ERASMUS+ KA1 funding. 5. A Final Conference to disseminate the project results to a wider audience of interest groups and to enhance the sustainability of the project results. The participant institutions are all leading music higher education institutions in Europe, making the impact of the project most notable.Through the involvement of the European Association of Conservatoires (AEC) representing around 300 institutions worldwide, the progress and results of the partnership was and is being widely disseminated as a model of curricular innovation through cross-border cooperation and expected to have a wide impact on the higher music education sector at large.The project created a stronger network of professionals in a higher music education sector, making it possible to implement new approaches to music teaching and learning through improvisation. The project developments enhance the institutionalisation of the participating institutions and the developed intellectual outputs are public and accessible to anyone interested in the developments of improvisation teaching/leanring.

Sampling is the main sound synthesis technique used in music and sound production (electronic instruments, sound post-production) due to its advantages (low RAM and hard disk memory cost, low computation cost, sound quality and exhaustiveness of the different types of produced sounds). However, it presents important limitations (low control flexibility, weak management of transitions between notes). Approaches developed in recent products consist in recording all possible combinations of playing modes, but their production is costly and they still result in limited extent and flexibility. This is also true for sound spatialization methods, which rely on the convolution of the signals with impulse responses of measured rooms, with the need of having measurements for all combinations of sources and listener positions. Conversely, existing parametric models, both for sound synthesis and spatialization, satisfy requirements of flexibility but are limited in their possibilities of simulation and require in certain cases more processing power. Moreover, using pre-recorded sounds in contexts of instrumental performance requires a deep musical expertise and does not benefit of assistance tools. The Sample Orchestrator 2 project aims at overcoming these various limits, through the following R&D objectives: 1) enhancing the quality-flexibility/cost ratio of sound synthesis methods through the development of new hybrid techniques, based on the modeling of instrument sounds and providing expressive transformations which respect their characteristics; 2) enhancing the quality-flexibility/cost ratio of sound spatialization methods through the development of hybrid methods between convolution and parametric models; 3) development of new interactive music synthesis methods providing different forms of on-the-fly augmentation of the musician performance (voicing, arrangement, orchestration) while respecting musical rules inherent to defined musical styles. Reaching these objectives implies the realization of an interdisciplinary research program in the fields of acoustics and digital audio signal processing (instrument sounds modeling, sound spatialisation, real-time processing architectures) and computer music (modeling and learning of musical rules, interactive generation). The targeted application fields concern the music industry, sound and music production, as well as multimedia applications of sound spatialization (simulation, virtual reality). The integration of the research results is foreseen through the development of a new generation hybrid synthesizer product, aimed at outperforming the characteristics of existing products. Moreover, all research results will be integrated in advanced software environments for music and sound creation and performing arts, and in specific products for musicians and professionals of audio production. They will be experimented and disseminated in the framework of higher education in music and sound. All targeted scientific and technical objectives go beyond the international state-of-the-art in concerned scientific disciplines and markets. The three project partners are leaders in their respective activity fields (sound and music technology research, sampler and sample banks products, higher education in music and sound) and the project may significantly help them develop their competitive advantage.