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Gesture based synthesis of bowed string instruments

Title Gesture based synthesis of bowed string instruments
Publication Type Master Thesis
Year of Publication 2006
Authors Pérez, A.
preprint/postprint document files/publications/d98261-DEA-2006-Perez.pdf
Abstract Synthesis of traditional music instruments has been an active research area and there exist successful implementations of instruments with low degree of control like non-sustained excitation instruments. But for instruments with sustained excitation, such as bowed strings or wind instruments, where the interaction between instrument and performer is continuous, the quality of existing models is far from realistic. In general, musical instrument synthesis techniques try to model the instrument but forget about the interaction between performer and instru- ment, that is musically much more relevant than the instrument itself. We can roughly classify the existing synthesis techniques into two cat- egories Physical models that focus on physical phenomena of sound pro- duction, and spectral models that focus on sound perception. With physical models naturalness and expressivity can hardly be reached without the need of controlling a huge amount of parameters that require the instrument itself, as well as a mastery comparable with the traditional performer and spectral models lack of performer interaction and articulation, that is, gestures. The aim of this work is to try to improve the quality in instrument sound synthesis, specifically for the violin family. We propose a hybrid model combining spectral and physical models to take advantage of the characteristics of both approaches, focusing on the gestures of the performer.