Using an Expressive Performance Template in a Music Conducting Interface

This paper describes an approach for playing expressivemusic, as it refers to a pianist's expressiveness, with atapping-style interface. MIDI-formatted expressiveperformances played by pianists were first analyzed andtransformed into performance templates, in which thedeviations from a canonical description was separatelydescribed for each event. Using one of the templates as askill complement, a player can play music expressivelyover and under the beat level. This paper presents ascheduler that allows a player to mix her/his own intensionand the expressiveness in the performance template. Theresults of a forty-subject user study suggest that using theexpression template contributes the subject's joy of playingmusic with the tapping-style performance interface. Thisresult is also supported by a brain activation study that wasdone using a near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS).Categories and Subject DescriptorsH.5.5 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Sound andMusic Computing methodologies and techniques.