Extraction of bowing parameters from violin performance combining motion capture and sensors

Abstract

A method is described for measurement of a complete set of bowing parameters in violin performance. Optical motion capture was combined with sensors for accurate measurement of the main bowing parameters (bow position, bow velocity, bow acceleration, bow-bridge distance, and bow force) as well as secondary control parameters (skewness, inclination, and tilt of the bow). In addition, other performance features (moments of on/off in bow-string contact, string played, and bowing direction) were extracted. Detailed descriptions of the calculations of the bowing parameters, features, and calibrations are given. The described system is capable of measuring all bowing parameters without disturbing the player, allowing for detailed studies of musically relevant aspects of bow control and coordination of bowing parameters in bowed-string instrument performance.

A Low-Cost Real-Time Tracking System for Violin

“…Unfortunately, at the time of writing, the Polhemus system cost several thousand dollars making it prohibitively expensive for general purpose use. Schoonderwaldt and Demoucron (2009) and Schoonderwaldt and Jensenius (2011) successfully demonstrated substantial non-real-time performance analysis using a Vicon optical motion capture system to measure acceleration combined with sensors from Demoucron (2008).…”

“…Existing bow tracking options tend to be either expensive (Maestre, Bonada, Blaauw, Perez, & Guaus, 2007), non-portable (Rasamimanana, Bernardin, Wanderley, & Bevilacqua, 2009;Schoonderwaldt and Demoucron, 2009), require a custom bow (McMillen, 2008), or have limited accuracy across one or many bow parameters . Accurate low-cost solutions are also rarely real-time.…”

“…This bouncing is reflected in the optical sensor measurements, but is not captured in the slower scale measurement readings, further introducing training measurement error. Guaus, Bonada, Maestre, Pérez, & Blaauw (2009) describes an effective bow pressure calibration technique building on Schoonderwaldt and Demoucron (2009) that uses similar principles with more accurate sensing technologies. However, in keeping with our low cost target, we intentionally limited ourselves to simple, cheap, and portable off-the shelf technologies accepting that this will reduce the accuracy of our result.…”

Static model of a violin bow: Influence of camber and hair tension on mechanical behavior

“…If significant trends emerge, the model presented in this paper would be useful to assist bow makers. Furthermore, since the bow is often tilted towards the fingerboard in playing 34,35 , a model based on spatial beam elements is currently developed in order to take into account the out-of-plane bending of the stick. …”

Statistical Modeling of Bowing Control Applied to Violin Sound Synthesis

“…In a more recent approach presented in [12], bowing parameters were very accurately measured by means of a commercially available electromagnetic field-based tracking device. Later, this methodology based on tracking positions of string ends and hair ribbon ends was adapted to a more expensive and commercial camera-based motion capture system that needed boa more complex calibration process (using many markers), and a noise reduction postprocessing step [13].…”