Modelling Intonation and Interaction in Vocal Ensembles

PhD thesisVoice is our native instrument and singing is the most universal form of music-making. As an important feature of singing, intonation accuracy has been investigated in previous studies, but the effect of interaction between singers has not been explored in detail. The aim of this research is to investigate interaction between singers in vocal ensembles, with a particular emphasis on how singers negotiate a joint reference pitch as the music unfolds over time. This thesis reports the results of three experiments which contribute to the scientific understanding of intonation. The first experiment tested how singers respond to controlled stimuli containing time-varying pitches. It was found that time-varying stimuli are more difficult to imitate than constant pitches, as measured by absolute pitch error. The results indicate that pitch difference, transient duration, and stimulus type have a significant influence on pitch error, and the instability of the acoustic reference has a positive correlation with pitch error. The second experiment measured pitch accuracy and interaction in unaccompanied unison and duet singing. The results confirm that interaction exists between vocal parts and influences the intonation accuracy. The results show that vocal part, singing condition (unison or duet), and listening condition (with or without a partner) have a significant effect on pitch accuracy, which leads to a linear mixed effect model describing the interaction by effect size and influencing factors. In the third experiment, the effect of interaction on both intonation accuracy and the pitch trajectory was tested in four-part singing ensembles. The results show: singing without the bass part has less mean absolute pitch error than singing with all vocal parts; mean absolute melodic interval error increases when participants can hear the other parts; mean absolute harmonic interval error is higher in the one-way interaction condition than the two-way interaction condition; and the shape of note trajectories varies according to adjacent pitch, musical training and sex.Queen Mary University of London and China Scholarship Council Joint PhD Scholarshi

Interpersonal synchronization in ensemble singing: the roles of visual contact and leadership, and evolution across rehearsals

Interpersonal synchronization between musicians in Western ensembles is a fundamental performance parameter, contributing to the expressiveness of ensemble performances. Synchronization might be affected by the visual contact between musicians, leadership, and rehearsals, although the nature of these relationships has not been fully investigated. This thesis centres on the synchronization between singers in a cappella singing ensembles, in relation to the roles of visual cues and leadership instruction in 12 duos, and the evolution of synchronization and leader-follower relationships emerging spontaneously across five rehearsals in a newly formed quintet. In addition, the developmental aspects of synchronization are investigated in parallel to tuning and verbal interactions, to contextualise synchronization within the wider scope of expressive performance behaviours. Three empirical investigations were conducted to study synchronization in singing ensembles, through a novel algorithm developed for this research, based on the application of electrolaryngography and acoustic analysis. Findings indicate that synchronisation is a complex issue in terms of performance and perception. Synchronization was better with visual contact between singers than without in singing duos, and improved across rehearsals in the quintet depending on the piece performed. Leadership instruction did not affect precision or consistency of synchronization in singing duos; however, when the upper voice was instructed to lead, the designated leader preceded the co-performer. Leadership changed across rehearsals, becoming equally distributed in the last rehearsal. Differences in the precision of synchronization related to altered visual contact were reflected in the perception of synchronization irrespective of the listeners’ music expertise, but the smaller asynchrony patterns measured across rehearsals were not. Synchronization in the quintet was not the result of rehearsal strategies targeted for the purpose of synchronization during rehearsal, but was paired with a tendency to tune horizontally towards equal temperament (ET), and to ET and just intonation in the vertical tuning of third intervals

Singing Voice Recognition for Music Information Retrieval

This thesis proposes signal processing methods for analysis of singing voice audio signals, with the objectives of obtaining information about the identity and lyrics content of the singing. Two main topics are presented, singer identification in monophonic and polyphonic music, and lyrics transcription and alignment. The information automatically extracted from the singing voice is meant to be used for applications such as music classification, sorting and organizing music databases, music information retrieval, etc. For singer identification, the thesis introduces methods from general audio classification and specific methods for dealing with the presence of accompaniment. The emphasis is on singer identification in polyphonic audio, where the singing voice is present along with musical accompaniment. The presence of instruments is detrimental to voice identification performance, and eliminating the effect of instrumental accompaniment is an important aspect of the problem. The study of singer identification is centered around the degradation of classification performance in presence of instruments, and separation of the vocal line for improving performance. For the study, monophonic singing was mixed with instrumental accompaniment at different signal-to-noise (singing-to-accompaniment) ratios and the classification process was performed on the polyphonic mixture and on the vocal line separated from the polyphonic mixture. The method for classification including the step for separating the vocals is improving significantly the performance compared to classification of the polyphonic mixtures, but not close to the performance in classifying the monophonic singing itself. Nevertheless, the results show that classification of singing voices can be done robustly in polyphonic music when using source separation. In the problem of lyrics transcription, the thesis introduces the general speech recognition framework and various adjustments that can be done before applying the methods on singing voice. The variability of phonation in singing poses a significant challenge to the speech recognition approach. The thesis proposes using phoneme models trained on speech data and adapted to singing voice characteristics for the recognition of phonemes and words from a singing voice signal. Language models and adaptation techniques are an important aspect of the recognition process. There are two different ways of recognizing the phonemes in the audio: one is alignment, when the true transcription is known and the phonemes have to be located, other one is recognition, when both transcription and location of phonemes have to be found. The alignment is, obviously, a simplified form of the recognition task. Alignment of textual lyrics to music audio is performed by aligning the phonetic transcription of the lyrics with the vocal line separated from the polyphonic mixture, using a collection of commercial songs. The word recognition is tested for transcription of lyrics from monophonic singing. The performance of the proposed system for automatic alignment of lyrics and audio is sufficient for facilitating applications such as automatic karaoke annotation or song browsing. The word recognition accuracy of the lyrics transcription from singing is quite low, but it is shown to be useful in a query-by-singing application, for performing a textual search based on the words recognized from the query. When some key words in the query are recognized, the song can be reliably identified

The Renaissance Repertoire Challenge: Achieving Authentic Choral Performances through the Application of Dalcroze Techniques

It is challenging for modern choirs to present aesthetically pleasing and historically authentic performances of Renaissance vocal repertoire due to its complex musical language and interpretive demands. Overcoming these obstacles requires thorough research, score study, and most importantly, a rehearsal approach that elicits engaged, confident, and nuanced responses from the choir. The Jaques-Dalcroze Method, an approach to music education developed by Émile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865-1950), emphasizes the harmony of mental and physical processes in the learner. Through an applied research study with fifteen university students and a conductor (participant-researcher), this study examines the effectiveness and suitability of the Dalcroze approach to the singing of music from the Renaissance era within a choral context. Over the course of nine sessions, participants performed physical exercises to embody the musical language of the Renaissance and integrated their discoveries into the singing of Josquin des Prez’ Ave Maria…virgo serena. They recorded journal entries after each session and completed exit interviews at the conclusion of the study. Findings suggest that exercises rooted in Dalcroze principles not only improve choir members’ overall rhythmic acuity, aural perception, individual and cooperative interpretive decision-making, and musical unity, but also awaken curiosity, enhance enjoyment, and establish grounding in the musical language of Renaissance repertoire. The goal of this project is to provide conductors with a practical “toolkit” and a pedagogical method that empowers their ensembles to produce thoughtful, imaginative, and engaging performances of Renaissance vocal music rooted in historical practice

Bambuco, Tango and Bolero: Music, Identity, and Class Struggles in Medellin, Colombia, 1930-1953

This dissertation explores the articulation of music, identity, and class struggles in the reception and consumption of three genres of popular music in a peripheral capital during a period of social and political turmoil. It explores the connections between two simultaneous historical processes in the mid-twentieth century. Colombian society experienced the rise of mass media and the society of mass consumption in Colombia and the outbreak of a social and political strife, a period usually known as La Violencia. Through the analysis of written material, especially the press, this work illustrates the use of aesthetic judgments to establish differences in ethnicity, social class, and gender. Another important aspect of the study focuses on the adoption of the genres by different groups, not only to demarcate differences at the local level, but as means to inscribe themselves within larger social imaginaries. In this way, bambuco articulates the contradictions and paradoxes brought about in the way Antioqueños (the regional community) want to belong to the nation. Tango articulates the difference between the regional whitened identity, the so-called raza antioqueña (Antioqueño race), and the mestizo (mixed ethnicity) imaginary associated to the nation's capital. Finally, the adoption of bolero embodies the aspirations of the middle classes to gain access to transnational and cosmopolitan imaginaries, generating in the process a de-politization of the space of social struggles that characterizes popular culture. Using a diachronic approach, the dissertation illustrates the variations of musical practices according to particular social and political circumstances. The discussion includes the musical and textual analysis of a few representative pieces of the repertoire

Reshaping American Music: The Quotation of Shape-Note Hymns by Twentieth-Century Composers

Throughout the twentieth century, American composers have quoted nineteenth-century shape-note hymns in their concert works, including instrumental and vocal works and film scores. When referenced in other works the hymns become lenses into the shifting web of American musical and national identity. This study reveals these complex interactions using cultural and musical analyses of six compositions from the 1930s to the present as case studies. The works presented are Virgil Thomson's film score to The River (1937), Aaron Copland's arrangement of "Zion's Walls" (1952), Samuel Jones's symphonic poem Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1974), Alice Parker's opera Singers Glen (1978), William Duckworth's choral work Southern Harmony and Musical Companion (1980-81), and the score compiled by T Bone Burnett for the film Cold Mountain (2003). Utilizing archival sources and interviews with composers, this study draws from a number of methodologies and disciplines in order to present a kaleidoscopic view of the meanings and contexts of these compositions, including cultural, religious, American, and music history, as well as musical and textual analysis. Through this thick-history approach, the study demonstrates the ways in which shape-note quotations evoke American regional and national history, and the composers' personal memories and identities

Sound design for the opera composer: concepts and methods

Sound design has become an important part of theatre, film and contemporary opera, and a creative discipline in its own right. A pattern of convergence between music and sound has emerged during the last two decades across these disciplines. My project investigates this convergence, reviewing the literature and recent sound practice in opera, theatre (particularly Composed Theatre) and film (both live action and animation). This review explores concepts including soundscape, immersion, acousmêtre, the sonic Umwelt and phenomenologies and semiotics of sound through the writings of Michel Chion, Nicholas Cook, R Murray Shafer, Theo Van Leeuwen and others. It also examines the role of sound in the work of practitioners such as composers Steve Reich, John Adams, Heiner Goebbels and Anthony Davis and their collaborators, and sound designers such as Gary Rydstrom, Nicolas Becker and Kristian Selin Eidnes Andersen in film, and Ross Brown and Complicité in theatre. From this review I draw out features, or modalities, of existing sound practice with the potential to be integrated into opera composition. I define these modalities as: sound as environment, sound as music, sound as action, sound as inner voice, and sound as sign. These modalities form a theoretical basis upon which to develop a method of opera composition in which sound design is integral. This forms the focus of this project, in particular the objective of moving beyond current practice to create opera with integrated sound design that exemplifies a dynamic and transactional relationship between sound, music and other elements. My three chamber operas Her face was of flowers, Vicky and Albert and The Trilobite, Or The Fall of Mr Williams are the result. I discuss the compositional process and performance history of these three pieces in relation to my five modalities of sound, and the models of sound practice that inspired them. Finally, I draw conclusions from the processes of composing, rehearsing and performing these operas that point the way to further development and exploration of opera with integrated sound design, both in my practice and elsewhere, offering the opera composer a new perspective on working with sound