Norio Emura

Feature exaggeration in scale performance on the piano

This paper proposes a set of parameters for describing features of scale‐playing on the piano. The parameter set consists of 15 parameters, among which 12 are three sets of four parameters pi1 through pi4 where i ={1, 2, 3} distinguishes three basic features; onset time, velocity, and duration. Each of these basic features is modeled as the sum of a global curve and the deviation from it, where the spline interpolation is employed using locally averaged points, or representative points, as the points to be passed. The local average is calculated for each sequence of notes played without finger crossing. The suffix j in pij distinguishes the standard deviations (j=0), the rms deviation from the spline curve (j=1), the range of the curve (j=2), the rms difference between successive notes (j=3), and the rms of the spline curve from the metronomic line (j=4). All parameters are made controllable with slider bars from 0% to 200% for synthesizing suppressed performance or exaggerated performance, where 100% rep...

Constructing an integrated system for the practice of playing the guitar.

Constructed here is an integrated system for the practice of playing the guitar for novice guitar players. Novice guitarists for popular music often give up playing it because they cannot keep practicing for the difficulty of realizing finger positions. An algorithm YG for giving optimal chord‐form sequence for given chords was proposed [Emura et al., AST, 104–107 (2006)]. Authors construct an integrated system for guitar practicing by implementing YG. The new system deals with thousands of MIDI files combined with names of chords for them. The proposed system shows chord sequences as the TAB score, with corresponding fingerings generated by YG as the chord diagram. By using the system, users are able to play excerpts using not the difficult but simple pattern of chord‐form. The system interacts with the user playing the MIDI guitar by showing the performed notes with an accompanying playback for current excerpt. The user is expected to be supported on playing it under a performance evaluation, where errors of fingerings are simultaneously shown with accompanying playback stopping or slowing down. The performance of the system is confirmed as better than the usual style of practicing in terms of occurrence frequency of errors. [Work supported by HRC, Ryukoku University.]

A modular system yielding jazz‐style arrangement for a given melody and sequence of chord names

There are many music systems available on the market, such as ones for automatic arrangement of music pieces given as note sequences for solo piano into a piano score in a specific style. Those systems, however, are usually designed to generate music by concatenating existing arrangement patterns, so we cannot expect those systems to meet user requirements. This paper proposes a system that arranges a given set of melody expressed as a note sequence and a chord name sequence into a piano score in modern jazz style based on so‐called ‘‘jazz theory.’’ The system is implemented in the classical theory of harmony and arrangement techniques described in jazz theory in a modular system. Proposed is a system that gives arrangement by integrating several modules according to structure of input music and user requirements. Performance of the proposed system is evaluated by comparing results given by the proposed system with those given by popular arrangement systems available on the market. Experimental results sh...

An integrated system for learning musical theories from western classical and popular music

Presented here is a support system for learning the theory of harmony, one of the main subjects in music education consisting of a set of forbidden progressions. By solving given tasks in the theory of harmony, students can learn forbidden progressions. Shown here is a system that generates all the allowable solutions for given bass tasks within triads, named ‘‘BDS’’ (Basse Donnee system), together with a checking system for answers given by students, named ‘‘VISAGE’’ (Validity Inspecting System for Answers of Given Exercises). VISAGE is designed to point out note allocations that violate forbidden progressions in an input answer if any. In case an answer of a given exercise does not violate forbidden progressions, the input answer is evaluated from a viewpoint of music. Also presented is ‘‘MAESTRO’’ (Musical Aesthetics Evaluation System for Tonal music in Regular and Orthodox style), which evaluates aesthetics of answers to given base tasks. [Work partly supported by Grant‐in‐Aid for Scientific Research ...

A jazz arrangement system yielding a guitar chord‐form sequence

Many guitar scores of rock or pop music arranged in jazz style are available all over the world. The amount of software for arranging given sequence of chord names and books of arrangement in jazz style has been growing for these past decades. Using this software, even amateur guitarists can play their favorite tunes in jazz style without knowledge of jazz theory. Most of these software systems, however, do not take musical appropriateness into account. So, sounds of chord‐form sequence output by these software systems often mismatch the input melody. Proposed here is a system that generates a chord‐form sequence in jazz style for a given set of melody and chord‐name sequence. The system analyzes an input set of given melody and chord‐name sequence based on jazz theory, and yields the chord‐form sequence considering the melody line. It is confirmed that the chord‐form sequence yielded by this system meets user requirements and is more preferable than that by software systems on the market. [Work supported by Academic Frontier Project, Doshisha Univ., Knowledge Cluster Project, MEXT, Grant‐in Aid for Scientific Research (No.16700154), MEXT, HRC, Ryukoku Univ.]