Chroma Palette : Chromatic Maps of Sound As Granular Synthesis Interface

Justin Donaldson, Ian Knopke, and Chris Raphael

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract:

Chroma based representations of acoustic phenomenon are representations of sound as pitched acoustic energy. A framewise chroma distribution over an entire musical piece is a useful and straightforward representation of its musical pitch over time. This paper examines a method of condensing the block-wise chroma information of a musical piece into a two dimensional embedding. Such an embedding is a representation or map of the different pitched energies in a song, and how these energies relate to each other in the context of the song. The paper presents an interactive version of this representation as an exploratory analytical tool or instrument for granular synthesis. Pointing and clicking on the interactive map recreates the acoustical energy present in the chroma blocks at that location, providing an effective way of both exploring the relationships between sounds in the original piece, and recreating a synthesized approximation of these sounds in an instrumental fashion.

Citation:

Justin Donaldson, Ian Knopke, and Chris Raphael. 2007. Chroma Palette : Chromatic Maps of Sound As Granular Synthesis Interface. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1177085

BibTeX Entry:

  @inproceedings{Donaldson2007,
 abstract = {Chroma based representations of acoustic phenomenon are representations of sound as pitched acoustic energy. A framewise chroma distribution over an entire musical piece is a useful and straightforward representation of its musical pitch over time. This paper examines a method of condensing the block-wise chroma information of a musical piece into a two dimensional embedding. Such an embedding is a representation or map of the different pitched energies in a song, and how these energies relate to each other in the context of the song. The paper presents an interactive version of this representation as an exploratory analytical tool or instrument for granular synthesis. Pointing and clicking on the interactive map recreates the acoustical energy present in the chroma blocks at that location, providing an effective way of both exploring the relationships between sounds in the original piece, and recreating a synthesized approximation of these sounds in an instrumental fashion. },
 address = {New York City, NY, United States},
 author = {Donaldson, Justin and Knopke, Ian and Raphael, Chris},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1177085},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 keywords = {Chroma, granular synthesis, dimensionality reduction },
 pages = {213--219},
 title = {Chroma Palette : Chromatic Maps of Sound As Granular Synthesis Interface},
 url = {http://www.nime.org/proceedings/2007/nime2007_213.pdf},
 year = {2007}
}