Consistency of timbre patterns in expressive music performance

International audienceMusical interpretation is an intricate process due to the inter- action of the musician's gesture and the physical possibilities of the instrument. From a perceptual point of view, these elements induce variations in rhythm, acoustical energy and timbre. This study aims at showing the importance of timbre variations as an important attribute of musical interpretation. For this purpose, a general protocol aiming at emphasizing specific timbre patterns from the analysis of recorded musical sequences is proposed. An example of the results obtained by analyzing clarinet sequences is presented, showing stable timbre variations and their correlations with both rhythm and energy deviations. this study, we aim at checking if timbre also follows systematic variations on natural clarinet sounds. We shall first describe a general methodology developed to analyze and compare recorded musical performances in order to point out consistency of timbre, rhythmic and intensity patterns in expressive music performance. An application of this methodol- ogy to twenty recorded musical sequences of the same clarinettist is then given. Eventually, we show that timbre, as rhythm and in

The high/low frequency balance drives the perception of noisy vibrations

Noisy vibrotactile signals transmitted during tactile explorations of an object provide precious information on the nature of its surface. Linking the properties of such vibrotactile signals to the way they are interpreted by the haptic sensory system remains challenging. In this study, we investigated humans' perception of noisy, stationary vibrations recorded during exploration of textures and reproduced using a vibrotactile actuator. Since intensity is a well-established essential perceptual attribute, an intensity equalization was first conducted, providing a model for its estimation. The equalized stimuli were further used to identify the most salient spectral features in a second experiment using dissimilarity estimations between pairs of vibrations. Based on dimensionally reduced spectral representations, linear models of dissimilarity prediction showed that the balance between low and high frequencies was the most important cue. Formal validation of this result was achieved through a Mushra experiment, where participants assessed the fidelity of resynthesized vibrations with various distorted frequency balances. These findings offer valuable insights into human vibrotactile perception and establish a computational framework for analyzing vibrations as humans do. Moreover, they pave the way for signal synthesis and compression based on sparse representations, holding significance for applications involving complex vibratory feedback

An evidence of the role of the cellists' postural movements in the score metric cohesion

International audienceWhile playing expressively, cellists tend to produce postural movements, which seem to be part of their musical discourse. This article actually highlights the existence of a metric embodiment, i.e. a natural encoding of the score metric structure through specific periodicities of the musicians' postural movements. By the means of constrained postu-ral conditions, we assess the degradation of the metric coupling between postural and bowing gestures among several cellists. Results reveal that bowing displacements should be in coherence with their postural behavior in order to ensure a correct encoding of the metric hierarchy

On the potentiality of abstract sounds in perception research

International audienceRecognition of sound sources and events is an important process in sound perception and has been studied in many research domains. Conversely sounds that cannot be recognized are not often studied except by electroacoustic music composers. Besides, considerations on recognition of sources might help to address the problem of stimulus selection and categorization of sounds in the context of perception research. This paper introduces what we call abstract sounds with the existing musical background and shows their relevance for different applications

Rolling sound synthesis : work in progress

International audienceThis paper presents a physically informed rolling sound synthesis model for the MetaSon synthesis platform. The aim of this sound synthesis platform will be shortly described. As shown in the state of the art, both in terms of sound effects and proposed controls, existing models can be improved. Some details on asymmetric rolling objects will be given and the sound synthesis model will be exposed. Perspectives for further studies and work in progress will be discussed

Une preuve du rôle des mouvements posturaux des violoncellistes dans la cohésion métrique de la partition

International audienceWhile playing expressively, cellists tend to produce postural movements, which seem to be part of their musical discourse. This article actually highlights the existence of a metric embodiment, i.e. a natural encoding of the score metric structure through specific periodicities of the musicians' postural movements. By the means of constrained postu-ral conditions, we assess the degradation of the metric coupling between postural and bowing gestures among several cellists. Results reveal that bowing displacements should be in coherence with their postural behavior in order to ensure a correct encoding of the metric hierarchy

Zero-Emission Vehicles Sonification Strategy Based on Shepard-Risset Glissando

International audienceIn this paper we present a sonification strategy developed for electric vehicles aiming to synthetize a new engine sound to enhance the driver's dynamic perception of his vehicle. We chose to mimic the internal combustion engine (ICE) noise by informing the driver through pitch variations. However, ICE noise pitch variations are correlated to the engine's rotations per minute (RPM) and its dynamics is covered within a limited vehicle speed range. In order to inform the driver with a significant pitch variation throughout the full vehicle speed range, we based our sonification strategy on the Shepard-Risset glissando. These illusory infinite ascending/descending sounds enable to represent accelerations with significant pitch variations for an unlimited range of speeds. In a way, we stay within the metaphor of ICE noise with unheard gearshifts. We tested this sonification strategy in a perceptual test in a driving simulator and showed that the mapping of this acoustical feedback affects the drivers' perception of vehicle dynamics

Machines that listen: towards a machine listening model based on perceptual descriptors

International audienceUnderstanding how humans use auditory cues to interpret their surroundings is a challenge in various fields, such as music information retrieval, computational musicology and sound modeling. The most common ways of exploring the links between signal properties and human perception are through di↵erent kinds of listening tests, such as catego-rization or dissimilarity evaluations. Although such tests have made it possible to point out perceptually relevant signal structures linked to specific sound categories, rather small sound corpora (100-200 sounds in a categorization protocol) can be tested this way. The number of subjects generally do not exceed 20-30, since it is also very time consuming for an experimenter to include too many subjects. In this study we wanted to test whether it is possible to evaluate larger sound corpora through machine learning models for automatic timbre characterization. A selection of 1800 sounds produced by either wooden or metallic objects were analyzed by a deep learning model that was either trained on a perceptually salient acoustic descriptor or on a signal descriptor based on the energy contents of the signal. A random selection of 180 sounds from the same corpus was tested perceptually and used to compare sound categories obtained from human evaluations with those obtained from the deep learning model. Results revealed that when the model was trained on the perceptually relevant acoustic descriptors it performed a classification that was very close to the results obtained in the listening test, which is a promising result suggesting that such models can be trained to perform perceptually coherent evaluations of sounds

Controlling a non linear friction model for evocative sound synthesis applications

International audienceIn this paper, a flexible strategy to control a synthesis model of sounds produced by non linear friction phenomena is proposed for guidance or musical purposes. It enables to synthesize different types of sounds, such a creaky door, a singing glass or a squeaking wet plate. This approach is based on the action/object paradigm that enables to propose a synthesis strategy using classical linear filtering techniques (source/resonance approach) which provide an efficient implementation. Within this paradigm, a sound can be considered as the result of an action (e.g. impacting, rubbing, ...) on an object (plate, bowl, ...). However, in the case of non linear friction phenomena, simulating the physical coupling between the action and the object with a completely decoupled source/resonance model is a real and relevant challenge. To meet this challenge, we propose to use a synthesis model of the source that is tuned on recorded sounds according to physical and spectral observations. This model enables to synthesize many types of non linear behaviors. A control strategy of the model is then proposed by defining a flexible physically informed mapping between a descriptor, and the non linear synthesis behavior. Finally, potential applications to the remediation of motor diseases are presented. In all sections, video and audio materials are available at the following URL: http://www.lma.cnrs-mrs.fr/~kronland/thoretDAFx2013

Perception of the object attributes for sound synthesis purposes

International audienceThis paper presents a work in progress on the perception of the attributes of the shape of a resonant object. As part of the ecological approach to perception-assuming that a sound contains specific morphologies that convey perceptually relevant information responsible for its recognition, called invariants-the PRISM laboratory has developed an environmental sound synthesizer aiming to provide perceptual and intuitive controls for a non-expert user. Following a brief presentation of the di↵erent strategies for controlling the perceptual attributes of the object, we present an experiment conducted with calibrated sounds generated by a physically-informed synthesis model. This test focuses on the perception of the shape of the object, more particularly its width and thickness since these attributes, especially the thickness, have not been much studied in the literature from a perceptual point of view. The first results show that the perception of width is di cult for listeners, while the perception of thickness is much easier. This study allows us to validate the proposed control strategy. Further works are planned to better characterize the perceptual invariants relevant for shape perception