Virtual instrument player using probabilistic gesture grammar
Eric Lindemann · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2011
Expressive instruments such as violin require subtle control gestures: variations in bow velocity and pressure over the course of a note, changes in vibrato depth and speed, portamento gestures, etc. Music synthesizers that attempt to emulate these instruments are often driven from keyboard controllers or directly from score editor or sequencer software. These synthetic control sources do not generally provide the level of detailed control required by expressive instruments. Even if a synthesizer offers a rich set of realistic continuous control inputs, the effort and skill required by the user to manage these controls, e.g., by drawing expression and vibrato controller curves in a MIDI sequencer, is considerable. Often the user would prefer to treat the synthesizer as a combination instrument and virtual player. The virtual player receives limited score-like control input and infers the more detailed gestural control. This presentation describes a virtual player mechanism that employs a probabilistic note-gesture grammar to aid with control inference. The virtual player uses the grammar to select various gestural patterns that are idiomatically appropriate given the limited control input. The virtual player is used to drive a concatenative music synthesizer employing a rich database of recorded note gestures.