Following Orchestra Conductors
Serge Lemouton, Riccardo Borghesi, Sampo Haapamäki, Frederic P. Bevilacqua, Emmanuel Fléty · 2019
We report on a system that enables the synchronization of electroacoustic sounds with conductor gestures. This system was specifically used in the context of the music composition 'IDEA', for instrumental ensemble and live electronics. After a series of experiments and testing, the system was used in two public performances with two different conductors. We describe in this paper the development and the implementation of the gesture following system and the data recording. In particular, the system requires the full-length recording of the conductor's right hand movements with an inertial measurement unit. The patches and the dataset are made publicly available, along with the recording of other pieces collected during the preliminary experiments. We believe this material can be used to test other following systems, to study and learn conducting gestures, as well as for more general computational analysis of movements.