A microtonal wind controller building on Yamaha’s technology to facilitate the performance of music based on the “19-EDO” scale

We describe a project in which several collaborators adapted an existing instrument to make it capable of playing expressively in music based on the microtonal scale characterised by equal divsion of the octave into 19 tones (“19-EDO”). Our objective was not just to build this instrument, however, but also to produce a well-formed piece of music which would exploit it idiomatically, in a performance which would provide listeners with a pleasurable and satisfying musical experience. Hence, consideration of the extent and limits of the playing-techniques of the resulting instrument (a “Wind-Controller”) and of appropriate approaches to the composition of music for it were an integral part of the project from the start. Moreover, the intention was also that the piece, though grounded in the musical characteristics of the 19-EDO scale, would nevertheless have a recognisable relationship with what Dimitri Tymoczko (2010) has called the “Extended Common Practice” of the last millennium. So the article goes on to consider these matters, and to present a score of the resulting new piece, annotated with comments documenting some of the performance issues which it raises. Thus, bringing the project to fruition involved elements of composition, performance, engineering and computing, and the article describes how such an inter-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary collaboration was co-ordinated in a unified manner to achieve the envisaged outcome. Finally, we consider why the building of microtonal instruments is such a problematic issue in a contemporary (“high-tech”) society like ours

A consideration of guitar fingering : implications for the preparation of a musical interpretation for performance and the process of writing music for the guitar

Most guitarists would agree that fingering lies at the heart of classical guitar performance. It is a process that eventually becomes intuitive in experienced performers, but one which requires years of playing, analysis and practice to develop. Despite its being a fundamental aspect of guitar playing, and an often critical inclusion in notated scores, guitar fingering nevertheless remains significantly under-represented in literature on guitar technique. Didactic methods for example, where notated fingering instructions are often abundant, mostly tend to reinforce the all-too-common conception that fingering denotes a rudimentary series of numbers and letters on a score that direct a player to employ a particular finger in the realisation of a given note. This observation is all the more startling when one considers how important fingering in guitar music can be; on an instrument where nearly any given pitch can be played in multiple positions and on different strings, fingering is surely an influential and significant factor of guitar technique that warrants research and discussion. This thesis considers aspects of guitar fingering that bear a decisive influence on the end musical product (i.e. the music that is heard). This study suggests that guitar fingering is a procedural activity that connects the act of interpreting music for performance with the process of writing the music itself. In doing so, this thesis provides a contextual framework to allow the performer to add breadth to his or her interpretive outcomes. This study also provides practical advice to non-guitarist-composers who wish to explore the highly interactive nature of guitar fingering on substantive musical attributes such as articulation, accentuation, phrasing and sonority. These considerations of guitar fingering are the products of practice-led research. Findings and conclusions arise from the author's experiential research as a performer and composer/arranger. Case studies of selected works from the guitar repertoire provide deep analysis of issues arising from guitar fingering as it relates to performance interpretation. A further case study of an original arrangement facilitates the exploration of fingering in the process of writing guitar music. This thesis is accompanied by a full-length CD recital that provides a broad contextual demonstration of the research findings. Additionally, short audio samples accompany the dissertation text to illuminate issues arising from guitar fingering that are illustrated through notated score excerpts. In addition to providing a substantial contribution to guitar literature on the subject of fingering, this study also makes a significant contribution to the relatively new area of practice-led research, where in the present thesis the empirical observation of creative practices generates new insights into the procedural activity of guitar fingering

A Functional Taxonomy of Music Generation Systems

Digital advances have transformed the face of automatic music generation since its beginnings at the dawn of computing. Despite the many breakthroughs, issues such as the musical tasks targeted by different machines and the degree to which they succeed remain open questions. We present a functional taxonomy for music generation systems with reference to existing systems. The taxonomy organizes systems according to the purposes for which they were designed. It also reveals the inter-relatedness amongst the systems. This design-centered approach contrasts with predominant methods-based surveys and facilitates the identification of grand challenges to set the stage for new breakthroughs.Comment: survey, music generation, taxonomy, functional survey, survey, automatic composition, algorithmic compositio

ShredGP: Guitarist Style-Conditioned Tablature Generation

GuitarPro format tablatures are a type of digital music notation that encapsulates information about guitar playing techniques and fingerings. We introduce ShredGP, a GuitarPro tablature generative Transformer-based model conditioned to imitate the style of four distinct iconic electric guitarists. In order to assess the idiosyncrasies of each guitar player, we adopt a computational musicology methodology by analysing features computed from the tokens yielded by the DadaGP encoding scheme. Statistical analyses of the features evidence significant differences between the four guitarists. We trained two variants of the ShredGP model, one using a multi-instrument corpus, the other using solo guitar data. We present a BERT-based model for guitar player classification and use it to evaluate the generated examples. Overall, results from the classifier show that ShredGP is able to generate content congruent with the style of the targeted guitar player. Finally, we reflect on prospective applications for ShredGP for human-AI music interaction.Comment: Accepted for publication at CMMR 202

The Benefits of Hybrid Picking in an Undergraduate Guitar Curriculum to Equip Students for a Diverse Performance Career

This qualitative study underscores a hybrid picking approach to the guitar curriculum at the undergraduate level to ensure better career opportunities for college graduates. While classical and commercial guitar styles vary in methodology, practice, and performance, many undergraduate guitarists may feel underprepared for professional career opportunities in the commercial realm based on the specific curriculum in the academic domain. In many undergraduate guitar curricula, guitarists must often choose between a classical or commercial approach to learning. Undergraduate guitarists may not be experienced in diverse guitar styles that could further a musical career if opportunities go beyond classical or jazz. The qualitative methodology of this study will compare standard undergraduate classical and jazz guitar curricula to some of the demands in commercial styles. Examples include traditional picking or strumming with a plectrum, guitar styles that employ hybrid picking, positioned scales with open strings, chord extensions, classical arpeggios and exercises, and comprehension of commercial techniques. While limited texts offer some concepts to address the significance of this problem, an undergraduate hybrid picking curriculum may be applicable for students desiring a full-time performance career in music, where many opportunities exclude standard classical and jazz guitar styles. The findings of this study could be valuable to both guitar instructors and students due to some limitations of standard guitar curricula found in many universities

The Development of a Method for Teaching Fundamentals of Guitar to College Students in Music Education and Music Therapy Curricula.

The purpose of this report was to formulate a methodical approach to the teaching of guitar skills needed for the effective use of the guitar by music educators and music therapists. In both these professions, the guitar is used in an accompanimental capacity and also is taught as an applied instrument. Presently, there is an ever-increasing supply of instruction books available which fulfill many different needs and explore various styles of guitar playing. However, at the time of this writing, a search of guitar texts has revealed no available text which is designed to develop the various skills needed to prepare the professional music educator or music therapist to use the guitar effectively in his work. From the vast array of styles and techniques of the guitar, this report chose to develop the knowledge and skills most useful to the classroom teacher and practicing music therapist. Such topics include tuning, note reading, basic classical and plectrum technique, first position chords, use of the capo, bar chords, diminished seventh chords, open chord tuning, introduction to guitar history and literature, and elementary fretboard harmony. The text is not intended for the beginning musician and builds on an expected knowledge of music fundamentals to accomplish quick and efficient assimilation of beginning guitar technique and musical concepts on the instrument. Note reading is developed through the use of non-traditional, not easily memorized exercises, often in unusual meter signatures. This report is not intended to be used as an exclusive text in any guitar learning situation. Supplementary material is essential, especially in the classical technique section where only developmental exercises and studies are given. It does not contain any literature from the guitar\u27s standard repertoire, nor traditional pedagogical studies. The chord reading section does not contain any songs as these (and songbooks) can become quickly outdated and lose their meaning to passing generations of students. It is imperative to use supplementary material to fill these needs. This method should be used along with the aid and instruction of a teacher. It is not, nor could be, thorough enough to replace explanation, demonstration, and augmentation by an experienced guitarist

Biomechanical Modelling of Musical Performance: A Case Study of the Guitar

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/2517 on 07.20.2017 by CS (TIS)Computer-generated musical performances are often criticised for being unable to match the expressivity found in performances by humans. Much research has been conducted in the past two decades in order to create computer technology able to perform a given piece music as expressively as humans, largely without success. Two approaches have been often adopted to research into modelling expressive music performance on computers. The first focuses on sound; that is, on modelling patterns of deviations between a recorded human performance and the music score. The second focuses on modelling the cognitive processes involved in a musical performance. Both approaches are valid and can complement each other. In this thesis we propose a third complementary approach, focusing on the guitar, which concerns the physical manipulation of the instrument by the performer: a biomechanical approach. The essence of this thesis is a study on capturing, analyzing and modelling information about motor and biomechanical processes of guitar performance. The focus is on speed, precision, and force of a guitarist's left-hand. The overarching questions behind our study are: 1) Do unintentional actions originating from motor and biomechanical functions during musical performance contribute a material "human feel" to the performance? 2) Would it be possible determine and quantify such unintentional actions? 3) Would it be possible to model and embed such information in a computer system? The contributionst o knowledgep ursued in this thesis include: a) An unprecedented study of guitar mechanics, ergonomics, and playability; b) A detailed study of how the human body performs actions when playing the guitar; c) A methodologyt o formally record quantifiable data about such actionsin performance; d) An approach to model such information, and e) A demonstration of how the above knowledge can be embeddedin a system for music performance