Analysis of musical dynamics in vocal performances

Abstract

Dynamics are one of the fundamental tools of expressivity in a performance. While the usage of this tool is highly subjective, a systematic methodology to derive loudness markings based on a performance can be highly beneficial. With this goal in mind, this paper is a first step towards developing a methodology to automatically transcribe dynamic markings from vocal rock and pop performances. To this end, we make use of commercial recordings of some popular songs followed by source separation and compare them to the karaoke versions of the same songs. The dynamic variations in the original commercial recordings are found to be structurally very similar to the aligned karaoke/multi-track versions of the same tracks. We compare and show the differences between tracks using statistical analysis, with an eventual goal to use the transcribed markings as guiding tools, to help students adapt with a specific interpretation of a given piece of music. We perform a qualitative analysis of the proposed methodology with the teachers in terms of informativeness and accuracy.