Stefan Balke

Hello, I’m Stefan. I completed my PhD in Music Information Retrieval (MIR) in 2017, working in Meinard Müller’s group at AudioLabs Erlangen. After that, I spent a year as a PostDoc with Gerhard Widmer’s group at the Institute for Computational Perception at JKU Linz. I then worked for three years as a Data Scientist and Team Lead at a consulting company. In the winter term of 2023/24, I had the opportunity to teach as a professor at Hochschule Weserbergland in Hameln, Germany. Currently, I’m back at AudioLabs Erlangen as a PostDoc in Meinard Müller’s group, focusing my research on wind music. In my free time, I enjoy spending time with my small family, playing the trumpet, and conducting a local concert band.

A detailed version of my curriculum vitae is available on request.

news

Sep 1, 2024	Re-joining AudioLabs Erlangen to conduct research on wind music. 🎺 Many thanks to Meinard Müller to give me this opportunity!
Jul 1, 2024	Together with two local organizations, our orchestra was accepted for the program “Engagiertes Land” which comes with 35k€ funding for 1.5 years. 🎉
Mar 20, 2024	We had a very successful special session at DAGA 2024. Thanks to all the participants and the co-organizers Jakob Abesser and Meinard Müller! 📢

selected publications

MTD: A Multimodal Dataset of Musical Themes for MIR Research

Frank Zalkow, Stefan Balke, Vlora Arifi-Müller, and Meinard Müller

Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (TISMIR), 3(1), 180–192, 2020

PDF Bib

@article{ZalkowBAM20_MTD_TISMIR,
  title = {{MTD}: {A} Multimodal Dataset of Musical Themes for {MIR} Research},
  author = {Zalkow, Frank and Balke, Stefan and Arifi-Müller, Vlora and Müller, Meinard},
  journal = {Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval ({TISMIR})},
  volume = {3},
  number = {1},
  year = {2020},
  pages = {180--192},
  doi = {10.5334/tismir.68},
  abbr = {TISMIR},
  selected = {true},
  pdf = {2020_ZalkowBAM_MTD_TISMIR.pdf}
}

Score Following as a Multi-Modal Reinforcement Learning Problem

Florian Henkel, Stefan Balke, Matthias Dorfer, and Gerhard Widmer

Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (TISMIR), 2(1), 67–81, 2019

PDF Code Bib

@article{HenkelBDW19_ScoFoRL_TISMIR,
  author = {Henkel, Florian and Balke, Stefan and Dorfer, Matthias and Widmer, Gerhard},
  title = {Score Following as a Multi-Modal Reinforcement Learning Problem},
  journal = {Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval ({TISMIR})},
  volume = {2},
  number = {1},
  pages = {67--81},
  year = {2019},
  doi = {http://doi.org/10.5334/tismir.31},
  abbr = {TISMIR},
  selected = {true},
  pdf = {2019_HenkelBDW_ScoreFollowingRL_TISMIR.pdf},
  code = {https://github.com/CPJKU/score_following_game}
}

Cross-Modal Music Retrieval and Applications: An Overview of Key Methodologies

Meinard Müller, Andreas Arzt, Stefan Balke, Matthias Dorfer, and Gerhard Widmer

IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 36(1), 52–62, 2019

PDF Bib

@article{MuellerABDW19_MusicRetrieval_IEEE-SPM,
  author = {M{\"u}ller, Meinard and Arzt, Andreas and Balke, Stefan and Dorfer, Matthias and Widmer, Gerhard},
  title = {Cross-Modal Music Retrieval and Applications: An Overview of Key Methodologies},
  journal = {{IEEE} Signal Processing Magazine},
  volume = {36},
  number = {1},
  pages = {52--62},
  year = {2019},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/MSP.2018.2868887},
  doi = {10.1109/MSP.2018.2868887},
  pdf = {2019_MuellerABDW_MusicRetrieval_IEEE-SPM_arXiv.pdf},
  abbr = {IEEE-SPM},
  selected = {true}
}