Accessing Tape Music Documents on Mobile Devices

The aim of this article is to present and discuss an innovative methodology aimed at accessing digitized copies of historical tape music audio documents; the methodology leverages on the multimedia and multisensory capabilities of mobile devices to provide an unprecedented level of fruition. In addition to the methodology, and stemming from it, we present an actual software application for Android tablet devices. This novel piece of software was designed and developed in a multidisciplinary team involving engineers as well as musicians, composers, and archivists. The strongest element in our work is the fact that it follows a rigorous process and it is based on the principles of philological awareness; thus, it also takes into consideration the critical points in the musicologist's domain such as (i) the definition of preservation (i.e., master) copy, (ii) the importance of secondary information, (iii) the history of production and transmission of audio documents.