An Evaluation of Linear and Non-linear Models of Expressive Dynamics

Expressive interpretation forms an important but complex aspect of music, particularly in Western classical music. Modeling the relation between musical expression and structural aspects of the score being performed is an ongoing line of research. Prior work has shown that some simple numerical descriptors of the score (capturing dynamics annotations and pitch) are effective for predicting expressive dynamics in classical piano performances. Nevertheless, the features have only been tested in a very simple linear regression model. In this work, we explore the potential of non-linear and temporal modeling of expressive dynamics. Using a set of descriptors that capture different types of structure in the musical score, we compare linear and different non-linear models in a large-scale evaluation on three different corpora, involving both piano and orchestral music. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study where models of musical expression are evaluated on both types of music. We show that, in addition to being more accurate, non-linear models describe interactions between numerical descriptors that linear models do not.