The application of jazz methods to Brazilian drum kit improvisatory techniques in choro, samba and bossa nova

There are a number of excellent books currently available that address Brazilian drum kit playing, but across all these books, there is a general lack of ideas for further development and advanced applications, particularly improvisation. Meanwhile, there are many excellent texts that deal with improvisation and the development of improvising skills, but they are largely within the realms of jazz drumming. As a drummer with a long interest in jazz and Brazilian styles, I came to a point where an in-depth look at the methodology for practicing improvisation within the framework of Brazilian music was a clear next step. It is something I felt the need for as a performer and as an educator. The first section of this thesis provides: a background to the characteristic sounds of choro, samba and bossa; background information on the development of Brazilian drum kit playing; a look at Brazilian phrasing concepts; and a discussion of rhythmic frameworks in these styles. The second section addresses practice and performance methodology based within the framework laid out by the earlier chapters. A significant part of this is the outlining of a graduated process for the development of three- and four{u00AD}way co-ordination. It also includes analysis of rhythmic tension-and-release devices and discussion of some of the subtler aspects of Brazilian drum kit performance. The final part addresses the development of solo ideas, primarily through motivic development. The ideas presented throughout are focused on the concepts of fluent and responsive drumming

Rhythm extraction from polyphonic symbolic music

International audienceWe focus on the rhythmic component of symbolic music similarity, proposing several ways to extract a monophonic rhythmic signature from a symbolic poly- phonic score. To go beyond the simple extraction of all time intervals between onsets (noteson extraction), we select notes according to their length (short and long extractions) or their intensities (intensity+/− extractions). Once the rhythm is extracted, we use dynamic programming to compare several sequences. We report results of analysis on the size of rhythm patterns that are specific to a unique piece, as well as experiments on similarity queries (ragtime music and Bach chorale variations). These results show that long and intensity+ extractions are often good choices for rhythm extraction. Our conclusions are that, even from polyphonic symbolic music, rhythm alone can be enough to identify a piece or to perform pertinent music similarity queries, especially when using wise rhythm extractions

CIRCUITION: CONCERTO FOR JAZZ GUITAR AND ORCHESTRA

Circuition: Concerto for Jazz Guitar and Orchestra is a programmatic musical composition which tells the story of the life cycle. Each part is designed to represent a particular time in life through age or set of events that relate to all people regardless of the specifics in one’s life. Although I disclose how the program of relates to specifics within my own life, the goal is that a listener will find resonance with their own. In this document I examine how the elements of form, harmony, melody, and rhythm shape the composition and inform its programmatic nature. Topics are divided into six chapters: The Conceptual and Compositional Process, “Part I: So, It Begins”, “Part II: The Response”, “Part III: Inquisitorial”, “Part IV: To the End”. These chapters will include musical examples, detailed analysis depicted through figures and text explanations, and information pertaining to the programmatic design. The objective of chapter one is to reveal this composer’s influences and how they relate to the musical creativity and program of the storyline, how the musical ideas were engineered to convey the story, the origins of the program, and how the combined elements of jazz guitar and the jazz vocabulary in conjunction with traditional orchestral instruments and writing culminate into a single work. Chapters two through five will break down each part into the four components previously mentioned: form, harmony, melody, and rhythm

Automatic Transcription of Bass Guitar Tracks applied for Music Genre Classification and Sound Synthesis

Musiksignale bestehen in der Regel aus einer Überlagerung mehrerer Einzelinstrumente. Die meisten existierenden Algorithmen zur automatischen Transkription und Analyse von Musikaufnahmen im Forschungsfeld des Music Information Retrieval (MIR) versuchen, semantische Information direkt aus diesen gemischten Signalen zu extrahieren. In den letzten Jahren wurde häufig beobachtet, dass die Leistungsfähigkeit dieser Algorithmen durch die Signalüberlagerungen und den daraus resultierenden Informationsverlust generell limitiert ist. Ein möglicher Lösungsansatz besteht darin, mittels Verfahren der Quellentrennung die beteiligten Instrumente vor der Analyse klanglich zu isolieren. Die Leistungsfähigkeit dieser Algorithmen ist zum aktuellen Stand der Technik jedoch nicht immer ausreichend, um eine sehr gute Trennung der Einzelquellen zu ermöglichen. In dieser Arbeit werden daher ausschließlich isolierte Instrumentalaufnahmen untersucht, die klanglich nicht von anderen Instrumenten überlagert sind. Exemplarisch werden anhand der elektrischen Bassgitarre auf die Klangerzeugung dieses Instrumentes hin spezialisierte Analyse- und Klangsynthesealgorithmen entwickelt und evaluiert.Im ersten Teil der vorliegenden Arbeit wird ein Algorithmus vorgestellt, der eine automatische Transkription von Bassgitarrenaufnahmen durchführt. Dabei wird das Audiosignal durch verschiedene Klangereignisse beschrieben, welche den gespielten Noten auf dem Instrument entsprechen. Neben den üblichen Notenparametern Anfang, Dauer, Lautstärke und Tonhöhe werden dabei auch instrumentenspezifische Parameter wie die verwendeten Spieltechniken sowie die Saiten- und Bundlage auf dem Instrument automatisch extrahiert. Evaluationsexperimente anhand zweier neu erstellter Audiodatensätze belegen, dass der vorgestellte Transkriptionsalgorithmus auf einem Datensatz von realistischen Bassgitarrenaufnahmen eine höhere Erkennungsgenauigkeit erreichen kann als drei existierende Algorithmen aus dem Stand der Technik. Die Schätzung der instrumentenspezifischen Parameter kann insbesondere für isolierte Einzelnoten mit einer hohen Güte durchgeführt werden.Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit wird untersucht, wie aus einer Notendarstellung typischer sich wieder- holender Basslinien auf das Musikgenre geschlossen werden kann. Dabei werden Audiomerkmale extrahiert, welche verschiedene tonale, rhythmische, und strukturelle Eigenschaften von Basslinien quantitativ beschreiben. Mit Hilfe eines neu erstellten Datensatzes von 520 typischen Basslinien aus 13 verschiedenen Musikgenres wurden drei verschiedene Ansätze für die automatische Genreklassifikation verglichen. Dabei zeigte sich, dass mit Hilfe eines regelbasierten Klassifikationsverfahrens nur Anhand der Analyse der Basslinie eines Musikstückes bereits eine mittlere Erkennungsrate von 64,8 % erreicht werden konnte.Die Re-synthese der originalen Bassspuren basierend auf den extrahierten Notenparametern wird im dritten Teil der Arbeit untersucht. Dabei wird ein neuer Audiosynthesealgorithmus vorgestellt, der basierend auf dem Prinzip des Physical Modeling verschiedene Aspekte der für die Bassgitarre charakteristische Klangerzeugung wie Saitenanregung, Dämpfung, Kollision zwischen Saite und Bund sowie dem Tonabnehmerverhalten nachbildet. Weiterhin wird ein parametrischerAudiokodierungsansatz diskutiert, der es erlaubt, Bassgitarrenspuren nur anhand der ermittel- ten notenweisen Parameter zu übertragen um sie auf Dekoderseite wieder zu resynthetisieren. Die Ergebnisse mehrerer Hötest belegen, dass der vorgeschlagene Synthesealgorithmus eine Re- Synthese von Bassgitarrenaufnahmen mit einer besseren Klangqualität ermöglicht als die Übertragung der Audiodaten mit existierenden Audiokodierungsverfahren, die auf sehr geringe Bitraten ein gestellt sind.Music recordings most often consist of multiple instrument signals, which overlap in time and frequency. In the field of Music Information Retrieval (MIR), existing algorithms for the automatic transcription and analysis of music recordings aim to extract semantic information from mixed audio signals. In the last years, it was frequently observed that the algorithm performance is limited due to the signal interference and the resulting loss of information. One common approach to solve this problem is to first apply source separation algorithms to isolate the present musical instrument signals before analyzing them individually. The performance of source separation algorithms strongly depends on the number of instruments as well as on the amount of spectral overlap.In this thesis, isolated instrumental tracks are analyzed in order to circumvent the challenges of source separation. Instead, the focus is on the development of instrument-centered signal processing algorithms for music transcription, musical analysis, as well as sound synthesis. The electric bass guitar is chosen as an example instrument. Its sound production principles are closely investigated and considered in the algorithmic design.In the first part of this thesis, an automatic music transcription algorithm for electric bass guitar recordings will be presented. The audio signal is interpreted as a sequence of sound events, which are described by various parameters. In addition to the conventionally used score-level parameters note onset, duration, loudness, and pitch, instrument-specific parameters such as the applied instrument playing techniques and the geometric position on the instrument fretboard will be extracted. Different evaluation experiments confirmed that the proposed transcription algorithm outperformed three state-of-the-art bass transcription algorithms for the transcription of realistic bass guitar recordings. The estimation of the instrument-level parameters works with high accuracy, in particular for isolated note samples.In the second part of the thesis, it will be investigated, whether the sole analysis of the bassline of a music piece allows to automatically classify its music genre. Different score-based audio features will be proposed that allow to quantify tonal, rhythmic, and structural properties of basslines. Based on a novel data set of 520 bassline transcriptions from 13 different music genres, three approaches for music genre classification were compared. A rule-based classification system could achieve a mean class accuracy of 64.8 % by only taking features into account that were extracted from the bassline of a music piece.The re-synthesis of a bass guitar recordings using the previously extracted note parameters will be studied in the third part of this thesis. Based on the physical modeling of string instruments, a novel sound synthesis algorithm tailored to the electric bass guitar will be presented. The algorithm mimics different aspects of the instrument’s sound production mechanism such as string excitement, string damping, string-fret collision, and the influence of the electro-magnetic pickup. Furthermore, a parametric audio coding approach will be discussed that allows to encode and transmit bass guitar tracks with a significantly smaller bit rate than conventional audio coding algorithms do. The results of different listening tests confirmed that a higher perceptual quality can be achieved if the original bass guitar recordings are encoded and re-synthesized using the proposed parametric audio codec instead of being encoded using conventional audio codecs at very low bit rate settings

Contemporary Carioca

Brazilian popular music is widely celebrated for its inventive amalgams of styles and sounds. Cariocas, native residents of Rio de Janeiro, think of their city as particularly conducive to musical mixture. Contemporary Carioca introduces a generation of Rio-based musicians who collaboratively have reinvigorated Brazilian genres, such as samba and maracatu, through juxtaposition with international influences, including rock, techno, and funk. He describes how these artists manage their careers, having reclaimed some control from record labels. Examining the specific meanings that their fusions have in the Carioca scene, he explains that musical mixture is not only intertwined with nationalist discourses of miscegenation, but also with the experience of being middle-class in a country confronting neoliberal models of globalization. Moehn offers vivid depictions of Rio musicians as they creatively combine and reconcile local realities with global trends and exigencies