==========================================================================
 jMIR 2.4
 Principal Designer: Cory McKay
 Copyright (C) 2010 (GNU GPL)
==========================================================================


-- OVERVIEW -- 

jMIR is an open-source software suite implemented in Java for use in music
information retrieval (MIR) research. It can be used to study music in both
audio and symbolic formats as well as mine cultural information from the web
and manage music collections. jMIR includes software for extracting features,
applying machine learning algorithms, mining metadata and analyzing metadata.

The primary emphasis of jMIR is on providing software for general research in
automatic music classification and similarity analysis. The main goals of the
project are as follows:

    * Make sophisticated pattern recognition technologies accessible to music
      researchers with both technical and non-technical backgrounds.
    * Eliminate redundant duplication of effort.
    * Increase cooperation and communication between research groups.
          o Facilitate iterative development and sharing of new MIR technologies.
          o Facilitate objective comparisons of algorithms.
    * Facilitate research combining high-level, low-level and cultural musical
      features (i.e. symbolic, audio and web-mined features).

In order to meet these goals, all aspects of jMIR are open source and distributed
free under a GNU General Public License. The software is well-documented and
include GUIs in order to increase general usability. A special emphasis has been
placed on software architectures that facilitate extensibility for those
technically inclined users who wish to modify or add to the software.

Each of the components comprising the jMIR software suite may be used entirely
separately or as an integrated whole. The components communicate with each other
using files in either ACE XML or Weka ARFF formats. The components are as follows:

Data Mining and Machine Learning

    * ACE: Pattern recognition software that utilizes meta-learning. Evaluates,
      trains and uses a variety of classifiers, classifier ensembles and 
      dimensionality reduction algorithms based on the needs of each particular 
      research problem.
    * ACE XML: Standardized file formats for representing information related to
      automatic music classification, including feature values, feature metadata, 
      insance labels and class ontologies.
    * jMIRUtilities: Tools for performing miscellaneous tasks, such as labelling
      instances, extracting data from Apple iTunes XML files, merging features
      extracted from different sources, etc.

Feature Extraction

    * jAudio: Software for extracting low and high-level features from audio
      recordings.
    * jSymbolic: Software for extracting high-level features from MIDI
      recordings.
    * jWebMiner: Software for extracting cultural features from web text.
    * jLyrics: Software for mining lyrics from the web and extracting textual
      features from them.

Data and Metadata

    * jSongMiner: Software for identifying unknown audio and extracting metadata
      about songs, artists and albums from various web services and embedded
      sources.
    * jMusicMetaManager: Software for profiling music collections and detecting
      metadata errors and redundancies.
    * Codaich, Bodhidharma MIDI and SLAC: Labeled datasets for training, testing
      and evaluating MIR systems.

This distribution contains the source code for all of the above jMIR software.
Each is packaged in a separate folder holding the associated NetBeans project.
Each folder also contains extensive additional information, including README
files and, in some cases, HTML manuals. The only exception is the Third_Party_Jars
folder, which contains third-party software libraries used by the other jMIR
components.

More information is available on the jMIR web site: http://jmir.sourceforge.net.

Please contact Cory McKay (cory.mckay@mail.mcgill.ca) or one of the jMIR 
co-designers with any bug reports or questions relating to ACE. 


-- LICENSING AND LIABILITY -- 

jMIR 2.34
Copyright (C) 2010 Cory McKay and co-designers

This software is free software; you can redistribute it
and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General 
Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation.

This software is distributed in the hope that it will be
useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public 
License along with this software; if not, write to the Free 
Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139,
USA.

Various jMIR components make use of third-party software. Details
are provided in the folder corresponding to each jMIR component.