Managing Gesture and Timbre for Analysis and Instrument Control in an Interactive Environment

William Hsu

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract:

This paper describes recent enhancements in an interactive system designed to improvise with saxophonist John Butcher [1]. In addition to musical parameters such as pitch and loudness, our system is able to analyze timbral characteristics of the saxophone tone in real-time, and use timbral information to guide the generation of response material. We capture each saxophone gesture on the fly, extract a set of gestural and timbral contours, and store them in a repository. Improvising agents can consult the repository when generating responses. The gestural or timbral progression of a saxophone phrase can be remapped or transformed; this enables a variety of response material that also references audible contours of the original saxophone gestures. A single simple framework is used to manage gestural and timbral information extracted from analysis, and for expressive control of virtual instruments in a free improvisation context.

Citation:

William Hsu. 2006. Managing Gesture and Timbre for Analysis and Instrument Control in an Interactive Environment. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1176927

BibTeX Entry:

  @inproceedings{Hsu2006,
 abstract = {This paper describes recent enhancements in an interactive system designed to improvise with saxophonist John Butcher [1]. In addition to musical parameters such as pitch and loudness, our system is able to analyze timbral characteristics of the saxophone tone in real-time, and use timbral information to guide the generation of response material. We capture each saxophone gesture on the fly, extract a set of gestural and timbral contours, and store them in a repository. Improvising agents can consult the repository when generating responses. The gestural or timbral progression of a saxophone phrase can be remapped or transformed; this enables a variety of response material that also references audible contours of the original saxophone gestures. A single simple framework is used to manage gestural and timbral information extracted from analysis, and for expressive control of virtual instruments in a free improvisation context. },
 address = {Paris, France},
 author = {Hsu, William},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1176927},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 keywords = {Interactive music systems, timbre analysis, instrument control. },
 pages = {376--379},
 title = {Managing Gesture and Timbre for Analysis and Instrument Control in an Interactive Environment},
 url = {http://www.nime.org/proceedings/2006/nime2006_376.pdf},
 year = {2006}
}