Timbre Variations as an Attribute of Naturalness in Clarinet Play

Abstract

Abstract.A digital clarinet played by a human and timed by a metronome was used to record two playing control parameters, the breath control and the reed displacement, for 20 repeated performances. The regular behaviour of the parameters was extracted by averaging and the fluctuation was quantified by the standard deviation. It was concluded that the movement of the parameters seem to follow rules. When removing the fluctuations of the parameters by averaging over the repetitions, the result sounded less expressive, although it still seemed to be played by a human. The variation in timbre during the play, in particular within a note's duration, was observed and then fixed while the natural temporal envelope was kept. The result seemed unnatural, indicating that the variation of timbre is important for the naturalness.

DeviceD: Audience–dancer interaction via social media posts and wearable for haptic feedback

“…Comments relating to how the dancer’s movements affected the digital media were less conclusive. This refers to the notion of legibility of interaction, which suggests that the complexity of interactive systems necessitates that external observers are either intimately aware of the systems mappings, or are invited to reach their own reductive conclusions (Salter et al, 2008 ). Similarly, the authors do not consider the opaque interaction employed for DeviceD as a drawback, but rather as means for observers to avoid focusing on the interactivity, but rather on the emerging performative qualities of the work.…”

“…Commissioned and supported by the British Science Association (Liggett et al 2017 ), the Manchester Science Festival, and Arts Council England, the work combined interactive music and visuals, motion tracking, haptic feedback, and online audience participation, with its primary aim being the development of a system where the performer’s choreography can be influenced directly through generated data, mirroring the way motion tracking technologies are used toward controlling sound, visuals, lights, and any other type of media that can be affected by digital data (Siegel, 2009 ). The authors decided on exploring this concept in response to the “general orthodoxy” that interactive performance is based upon, which in the case of music-based interaction follows a model of “gesture → sensor → sound = musical expression” (Salter et al, 2008 , p. 249), where “dancers are able to have a direct effect on the music during a performance” (Siegel, 2009 , p. 193). With the choreography generating data able to affect digital media in a multitude of manners, dancers can only utilize the resulting audiovisual material as a way of affecting the choreography through their own hearing and vision.…”