Tag: ECHO

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The ECHO Project has Come to an End

The project “ECHO: Explaining Composition, Harmony & Orchestration” was initiated by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel and implemented by Lucas Chingis Marty. The final presentation took place on February 19, 2026, at the FHNW Campus Brugg-Windisch. The bachelor’s thesis “ECHO: Explaining Composition, Harmony & Orchestration – A Multimodal AI System for Music Analysis and Education” develops a local multimodal AI system for the analysis and accessible explanation of musical structures based on audio data. The objective is to bridge the gap between music information retrieval (MIR, an automatic audio analysis) and natural language explanation through large language models. The system combines multiple analysis components (tempo, key, chord, instrument, and melody recognition) with a locally operated language model (Llama 3.1-8B) that translates the extracted data into understandable explanations for beginners and intermediate users. Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), guardrails to reduce hallucinations, and a feedback and evaluation system are employed as part of the approach. The implementation is realized as a desktop application without cloud dependency. The evaluation includes technical measurements on datasets comprising several hundred music tracks as well as a small user study. The thesis demonstrates that a locally operated system can in principle present musical analysis in an understandable way, although clear accuracy limitations of the applied MIR methods remain. Opportunities could open up not only for music education, but also for the preservation of endangered music.

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Start of the ECHO Project

On October 24, 2025, the kick-off meeting for the ECHO project took place at the FHNW School of Business. Two weeks later, on November 7, the proposal was approved. Project collaborator is BIT student Lucas Chingis Marty, who is writing his thesis on this topic. The initiator is Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel. ECHO is an MLLM-based chatbot that introduces children, young people, and laypeople to the world of music. It can listen to, describe, and evaluate pieces and songs. To do this, it is equipped with a powerful audio analysis module. It refers to key, melody, and harmony, among other things. ECHO makes music accessible and understandable without requiring any prior knowledge. The aim is to promote curiosity, listening comprehension, and artistic taste. The prototype is expected to be available in February 2026.