The performance of notes inégales: the influence of tempo, musical structure and individual performance style on expressive timing

NOTES INÉGALES IS A COMMON PRACTICE IN THE per- formance of French baroque music. It indicates that the first of a pair of equally notated notes is played longer, similar to the use of swing eighths in jazz. The perfor- mance of that inequality is an ongoing source of debate, but the actual performance has not been studied yet. In an experiment, eight harpsichordists and eight baroque violinists performed six melodies of French baroque gavottes in three tempo conditions. The mean ratio of inequality was 1.63, with mean ratios of individual per- formers varying between 1.89 and 1.33. Another sig- nificant source of variance was the metric structure, with larger inequality found at metrically important points. Tempo also had an important influence, but individual interpretation varied greatly. For example, while most performers played more evenly while tempo increased, some performers chose the opposite strategy. Pitch interval had only a minor impact on the execution of the notes inégales, but also showed differences between performers. The results show the importance of personal style in music performance: although the music played is highly standardized, we show how the timing of different performers can be influenced by dif- ferent aspects of the musical structure

Analysis and automatic annotation of singer's postures during concert and rehearsal

Bodily movement of music performers is widely acknowledged to be a means of communication with the audience. For singers, where the necessity of movement for sound production is limited, postures, i.e. static positions of the body, may be relevant in addition to actual movements. In this study, we present the results of an analysis of a singer’s postures, focusing on differences in postures between a dress rehearsal without audience and a concert with audience. We provide an analysis based on manual annotation of postures and propose and evaluate methods for automatic annotation of postures based on motion sensing data, showing that automatic annotation is a viable alternative to manual annotation. Results furthermore suggest that the presence of an audience leads the singer to use more ‘open’ postures, and differentiate more between different postures. Also, speed differences of transitions from one posture to another are more pronounced in concert than during rehearsal