Percussive Gesture Analysis and Synthesis

Participants: Alexandre Bouënard (Université de Bretagne Sud/McGill University)
Sylvie Gibet (supervisor, Université de Bretagne Sud)
Marcelo M. Wanderley (supervisor, McGill University)
Fabrice Marandola (McGill University)
Funding: Valoria-SAMSARA, Université de Bretagne Sud, Pôle de Compétitivité Images & Réseaux
NSERC Discovery Grant (M. Wanderley)
International Doctoral College of the Université Européenne de Bretagne (UEB) (A. Bouënard)
Project Type: Doctoral thesis (2006-2009),
Postdoctoral fellowship (2010).
Time Period: Sept. 2006–Aug. 2010. (Completed.)

Project Description

This project focuses on the interaction of autonomous, realistic and musically-gifted virtual agents with sound synthesis systems.

Our interest lies both in the analysis and the synthesis of percussive gestures. One the one hand, the analysis focuses on timpani gestures and aims at extracting relevant movement features. On the other hand, the synthesis part involves an inverse-dynamics control chain of a mechanical virtual agent model. For improved realism, we will use physical modelling for sound synthesis.

We expect that the virtual agent simulation will show the relevance of gestural control in animation, since gesture influence acts on the fine nature of the produced sound and on the spatial and temporal coordination of movements in charge of musical expressivity.

Publications

2010

Alexandre Bouënard, Marcelo  M. Wanderley and Sylvie Gibet. "Gesture Control of Sound Synthesis: Analysis and Classification of Percussion Gestures". Acta Acustica united with Acustica, Special issue on Natural and Virtual Instruments: Control, Gesture and Player Interaction, vol. 96, number 4, S. Hirzel Verlag, 2010, pages 668–677. DOI: 10.3813/AAA.918321.

Florian Grond, Alexandre Bouënard, Thomas Hermann and Marcelo  M. Wanderley. "Virtual Auditory Myography of Timpani-playing Avatars". In Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFX), 2010, pages 135–142.

2009

Alexandre Bouënard. "Synthesis of Music Performances: Virtual Character Animation as a Controller of Sound Synthesis". PhD thesis, European University of Brittany. Thesis defended on December 10, 2009.

Alexandre Bouënard, Marcelo  M. Wanderley and Sylvie Gibet. "Analysis of Timpani Preparatory Gesture Parameterization". In International Gesture Workshop, 2009.

Alexandre Bouënard, Sylvie Gibet and Marcelo  M. Wanderley. "Real-Time Simulation and Interaction of Percussion Gestures with Sound Synthesis". Technical report number MUMT-IDMIL-09-01, 2009.

Alexandre Bouënard, Marcelo  M. Wanderley and Sylvie Gibet. "Advantages and Limitations of Simulating Percussion Gestures for Sound Synthesis". In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), 2009, pages 255–261.

Alexandre Bouënard, Sylvie Gibet and Marcelo  M. Wanderley. "Hybrid Motion Control combining Inverse Kinematics and Inverse Dynamics Controllers for Simulating Percussion Gestures". In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA), 2009, pages 17–20.

2008

Alexandre Bouënard, Marcelo  M. Wanderley and Sylvie Gibet. "Analysis of Percussion Grip for Physically Based Character Animation". In Proceedings of the International Conference on Enactive Interfaces (ENACTIVE), 2008, pages 22–27.

Alexandre Bouënard, Sylvie Gibet and Marcelo  M. Wanderley. "Enhancing the Visualization of Percussion Gestures by Virtual Character Animation". In Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), 2008, pages 38–43.

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