Intuitive Visualization of gestures in Expressive Timing: A Case Study on Final Ritards.

Description

Expressive timing is vital for the aesthetic quality that makes us appreciate performed music. It is a largely tacit skill that musicians acquire by practice. A long-standing intuition is that expressive timing is closely related to the concept of motion. This view leads naturally to the adoption of a dynamical systems approach to the study of expressive timing. A well-known visualization technique from dynamical systems theory is the phase-plane representation. The application of this technique, that highlights the dynamic aspects of the data, is demonstrated in a case study on the final ritard in performances of Schumann’s Träumerei. We argue that expressive gestures are visible in a clear and intuitive manner in the phase-plane representations. Another striking aspect of the phase-plane trajectories is their suggestion of human gestural motion.

Period	27 Aug 2008
Event title	10th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC10)
Event type	Conference
Location	JapanShow on map