[Clam-devel] Re: A YES/NO question about the capability of the synthesizer & validity of the score

[Han, Yushen]

Pau and Greg,

I was talking to my professor who was an oboe player.
He suggested that a new note should be identified explicitly in the score.
This is because the length of the pipe in an oboe is changing as a new
note is attacking.
The musician made an explicit effort at the moment this transition.

I am thinking of having explicit information over frames in the score:
MIDI frequency brightness

In case that the music is driven by an instrument that does not given
pitch explicitly or the program is taking input from the
pitch-tracking of an audio, the program should be able to make a
decision on the fly.

Does this make sense to you?

Best regards,
Han, Yushen

On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 1:48 PM, Han, Yushen <yushen.han at gmail.com> wrote:
> Greg,
>
> I did not use a breath controller before. But it seems that the breath
> controller will collaborate with a MIDI keyboard so I know the note on
> / off time. The breath controller could continually either change the
> velocity or do pitch bend.
>
> I was thinking about holding a few frames in a realtime simulated
> situation of reading the score.
> By simulation, I mean that we pretend the score is known to us only up
> to the current frame.
> Actually "a few frames" did not help me identify a new note much. So I
> will have to give up this idea.
>
>
> From our conversation, I think your assumption is that the score
> information is all available to the synthesizer, so we can look ahead.
> Is that correct?
>
> Best regards,
> Han, Yushen
>
> On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 1:36 PM, Greg Kellum <greg.kellum at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Yushen,
>>
>> Oh...  At first I thought you were talking about when reading from a score
>> file.  Um...  In what cases would holding a couple of frames help you decide
>> whether it's a new note?  I've never used a breathe controller before, but I
>> would have thought that when the performer presses a different button that
>> causes a new MIDI note on message which should create a new note on the
>> synthesizer.  Are you thinking about cases where he accidentally presses a
>> wrong note?
>>
>> Best,
>> Greg
>>
>> On Jul 3, 2008, at 7:28 PM, Han, Yushen wrote:
>>
>>> Hi, Greg
>>>
>>> In my mind it was "having the synthesizer controlled in real-time by a
>>> performer".
>>> The performer is the musician who will be using the MIDI controller.
>>>
>>> What's in your mind?
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Han, Yushen
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 1:02 PM, Greg Kellum <greg.kellum at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Yushen,
>>>>
>>>>> I also thought about holding 2 (or more) frames in synthesis to make a
>>>>> decision on whether it is a new note. A delay of 2 frame (0.011s)
>>>>> would not be noticed by human but neither it is enough for us to be
>>>>> sure about whether a new note is coming. You did not hold any frames
>>>>> in synthesis, did you?
>>>>
>>>> Which input modality do you have in mind here?  Are you talking about
>>>> reading from a score file or having the synthesizer controlled in
>>>> real-time
>>>> by a performer?  And if it's with a performer, you mean then someone
>>>> playing
>>>> a MIDI controller or someone working with audio driven synthesis?
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>> Greg
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>> Han, Yushen
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 6:08 AM, Greg Kellum <greg.kellum at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Yushen,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It sounds like you're having problems with transients...  When I
>>>>>> generated that score for the violin sonata, I used a pitch tracker I
>>>>>> had been working on earlier to generate the initial score, but then, I
>>>>>> went back over it and made corrections to the score by hand.
>>>>>> Sometimes when there were transitions between notes, there simply
>>>>>> isn't any unambiguous pitch value, and if you force a pitch tracker to
>>>>>> give you a value for those frames, it will make a mistake, right?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I later added transient detection to the pitch tracker so if there was
>>>>>> a big change in the pitch value and the aperiodicity of the signal
>>>>>> jumped as well, then the new pitch value would be marked as a
>>>>>> transient and suppressed.  You could do something like this in the
>>>>>> synthesizer instead.  But the score generator has access to the
>>>>>> original signal and can make a much better guess as to whether a frame
>>>>>> is a transient than the synthesizer can.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Best,
>>>>>> Greg
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 12:23 AM, Han, Yushen <yushen.han at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Pau,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> So it is YES - my synthesizer should be able to play ANYTHING
>>>>>>> indicated from the score.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> A difficulty is that I did not know how something that is arbitrarily
>>>>>>> given in the score file should sound like.
>>>>>>> The concept of a "note" which should last at least for 50ms, may not
>>>>>>> apply anymore.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> But I can still make it work by SMS transformation. Let's hear how it
>>>>>>> will sound...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Han, Yushen
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 6:17 PM, Pau Arumí Albó <parumi at iua.upf.edu>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> El dc 02 de 07 de 2008 a les 18:12 -0400, en/na Han, Yushen wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Here I have a fundamental question about the purpose of this
>>>>>>>>> synthesizer:
>>>>>>>>> Should the synthesizer be able to produce whatever the score
>>>>>>>>> indicates,
>>>>>>>>> even if it is something a real instrument / human musician would not
>>>>>>>>> be able to do?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> sure
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>>
>