Esteban Maestre - Stanford University

Esteban Maestre
Contact
Information
Research
Interests
Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics office: +1 650 723 4971
Department of Music mobile: +1 415 774 6130
Stanford University, Stanford (CA), USA e-mail: esteban@ccrma.stanford.edu
Music Technology Group office: +34 935 422 176
Departament de Tecnologies de la Informació i la Comunicació mobile: +34 659 263 223
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: esteban.maestre@upf.edu
Sound analysis and synthesis, speech processing,
musical performance and gesture modeling.
Education Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
Honors and
Awards
Professional
Experience
Computer Science and Digital Communication, Ph.D. October 2006 – November 2009
• Dissertation: ”Modeling instrumental gestures: an analysis/synthesis framework for violin bowing”
• Advisors: Professor Xavier Serra (Univesitat Pompeu Fabra) and Professor Julius O. Smith III
(Stanford University)
Computer Science and Digital Communication, D.E.A. September 2004 – October 2006
• Thesis: ”Coding instrumental gestures: towards a quantitative description of instrumental gestures
in excitation-continuous musical instruments”
• Advisor: Professor Xavier Serra (Univesitat Pompeu Fabra)
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
Electrical Engineering, M.Sc. September 2001 – June 2003
• Thesis: ”Resonant LLC converter for large flat displays”
• Advisors: Professor Francesc Guinjoan (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya) and Dr. Bernd
Ackermann (Philips Research Laboratories - Aachen, Germany)
Electrical Engineering, B.Eng. September 1997 – June 2000
• Specialization: Control and Automation
Beatriu de Pinós Fellowship, awarded by Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca
(AGAUR) for a post-doctoral research residency at the Center for Computer Research in Music
and Acoustics (CCRMA), Stanford University (two-year funding, 2010-2012).
Scholarship for Outstanding Academic Achievement, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2010.
B.E. Postgraduate Research Scholarship, awarded by Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de
Recerca (AGAUR) for a pre-doctoral research residency at the Center for Computer Research in
Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Stanford University (six-month funding, 2008).
S.T.S.M. Scholarship, awarded by the EU-ICT 7th Framework Programme SID Project (Sonic Interaction
Design), 2008.
R+D+I Research Scholarship, awarded by Universitat Pompeu Fabra (five-year funding, 2004-2009).
Philips Research Junior Scientist Program, awarded for a research residency at Philips Resarch Laboratories
- Aachen, Germany. Master Thesis research stage (six-month funding, 2002-2003).
Stanford University, Stanford (CA), USA
Postdoctoral Researcher / Visiting Scholar October 2010 – present
Research on instrumental gesture modeling in (ensemble) music performance, multi-modal data acquisition,
and musical instrument sound analysis/synthesis.
Lecturer February 2011 – present
Digital signal processing for Digital Audio Effects (DAFx):
CCRMA Summer Workshops (Stompbox Design)
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
Research Associate November 2009 – present
EU-funded and industrial projects, including context-aware mobile music interaction, violin gesture

Review
Activities
Invited
Talks
(selected)
modeling, recorder gesture modeling, speech processing, and ensemble music performance modeling.
Other duties include the supervision and evaluation of graduate students in research-oriented M.Sc.
thesis projects and Ph.D. theses.
Teaching Assistant / Lecturer September 2004 – October 2010
Taught diverse theory and practical classes, including Voice over IP, Relational Databases,
and Digital Music Lab.
Research Assistant September 2004 – October 2009
EU-funded and industrial projects, including context-aware mobile music interaction, violin gesture
modeling, singing voice modeling, and expressive music performance modeling.
Other duties included the supervision and evaluation of graduate students in research-oriented B.Eng.
final projects.
Barcelona Music and Audio Technologies, Barcelona, Spain
Business Development Officer March 2008 – November 2009
Business opportunity search at international level. Technology and product representative tasks.
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
Lecturer September 2003 – June 2005
Taught diverse theory and practical classes, including Digital Signal Processing, Circuit Design,
Power Electronics, DSP Processor Programming, and Audio/Video Lab.
Teaching Assistant September 2001 – June 2003
Taught diverse theory and practical classes, including Digital Signal Processing, Circuit Design, and
Analog Electronics.
Philips Research, Aachen, Germany
Junior Researcher September 2002 – June 2003
Research activities in the field of resonant power conversion. Succesfully developed a novel LLC
resonant converter prototype. Finalized a research-oriented M.Sc. thesis in industrial context.
ACM Workshop on Music and Machine Learning (MML)
IEEE Journal on Selected Topics in Signal Processing (IEEE-STSP)
IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing (IEEE-TASLP)
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (IEEE-TSMC)
International Computer Music Conference (ICMC)
International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx)
International Conference on Sound and Music Computing (SMC)
International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR)
International Symposium on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME)
Journal of New Music Research (JNMR)
Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces (JMUI)
162nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. Special Session on Expressivity in Digital Music
Synthesis. San Diego (USA), 2011
“Synthesis of bowing controls applied to violin sound generation”
Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology, McGill University. Workshop
on Motion Capture of String Quartet Performances. Montréal (Canada), 2011
“Towards a computational analysis of inter-dependence in string quartet performance”
KTH Royal Insititute of Technology. Workshop on Current Trends in Music Instrument Research.
Stockholm (Sweden), 2009
“Performance modeling for instrumental sound synthesis: bowing control for violin sound generation”
Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, Stanford University. Digital Signal Processing
Research Seminar. Stanford (USA), 2008
“Modeling instrumental gestures in violin performance: an approach to sound synthesis”
Casa Paganini, Universitá di Genova. 2nd EyesWeb Week. Genova (Italy), 2008
“Bowed string instrumental gesture analysis and modeling for sound generation”

Publications Book chapters
Janer, J., Maestre, E. “Mapping phonetic features for voice-driven sound synthesis”, E-business and
Telecommunication. J. Filipe and M.S. Obaidat (Eds.), Sringer, Berlin-Heidelberg, 2009.
Ramírez, R., Hazan, A., Maestre, E., Serra, X. “A machine learning approach to expressive performance
in jazz standards”, Multimedia Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery. V. A. Petrushin and
L. Khan (Eds.), Springer, London, 2007.
Ramírez, R., Gómez, E., Vicente, V., Puiggròs, M., Hazan, A., Maestre, E. “Modeling expressive
music performance in bassoon audio recordings”, Intelligent Computing in Signal Processing and
Pattern Recognition. D. Huang, K. Li, and G. W. Irwin (Eds.), Springer-Verlag, New York, 2006.
Journal articles
Ramírez, R., Maestre, E., Serra, X. “A Rule-Based Evolutionary Approach to Music Performance
Modeling”, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (to appear).
Pérez, A., Bonada, J., Maestre, E., Blaauw, M., Guaus, E. “Performance Control driven Violin
Timbre Model based on Neural Networks”, IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language
Processing, Vol. 20, No. 3, 2012.
Ramírez, R., Maestre, E., Pérez, A., Serra, X. “Automatic Performer Identification in celtic violin
audio recordings”, Journal of New Music Research, Vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 165-174, 2011.
Maestre, E., Ramírez, R. “An approach to predicting bowing control parameter contours in violin
performance”, Intelligent Data Analysis, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 587-599, 2010.
Ramírez, R., Maestre, E., Serra, X. “Automatic performer identication in commercial monophonic
Jazz performances”, Pattern Recognition Letters, Vol. 31, pp. 1514-1523, 2010.
Maestre, E., Blaauw, M., Bonada, J., Guaus, E., Pérez, A. “Statistical modeling of bowing control
applied to violin sound synthesis”, IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing,
Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 855-871, 2010.
Maestre, E., Ramírez, R., Kersten, S., Serra, X. “Expressive concatenative synthesis by reusing
samples from real performance recordings”, Computer Music Journal, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 23-42,
2009.
Ramírez, R., Hazan, A., Maestre, E., Serra, X. “A genetic rule-based expressive performance model
for Jazz saxophone”, Computer Music Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 38-50, 2008.
Ramírez, R., Maestre, E., Pertusa, A., Gómez, E., Serra, X. “Performance-based interpreter identification
in saxophone audio recordings”, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video
Technology, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 356-364, 2007
Ramírez, R., Hazan, A., Gómez, E., Maestre, E., Serra, X. “Discovering expressive transformation
rules from saxophone Jazz performances”, Journal of New Music Research, Vol. 34, No. 4, pp.
319-330, 2005
Conference papers/abstracts
Maestre, E., Scavone, G. P., Smith III, J. O. “Modeling of a violin input admittance by direct
positioning of second-order resonators”, 162nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, 2011.
Maestre, E. “Synthesis of bowing controls applied to violin sound generation”, 162nd Meeting of the
Acoustical Society of America, 2011.
Mayor, O., Llop, J., Maestre, E. “RepoVizz: A multi-modal on-line database and browsing tool for
music performance research”, International Symposium on Music Information Retrieval, 2011.
Vinceslas, L., García, F., Pérez, A., Maestre, E. “Mapping blowing pressure and sound features in
recorder playing”, International Conference on Digital Audio Effects, 2011.
Papiotis, P., Marchini M., Pérez, A., Maestre, E., Andrzejak, R. “Synchronization of intonation
adjustments in violin duets: towards an objective evaluation of musical interaction”, International
Conference on Digital Audio Effects, 2011.
Marchini, M., Papiotis P., Pérez, A., Maestre, E. “A Hair Ribbon Deflection Model for Low-Intrusiveness
Measurement of Bow Force in Violin Performance”, International Symposium on New Interfaces for
Musical Expression, 2011.
García, F., Vinceslas L., Maestre, E., Tubau, J. “Acquisition and study of blowing pressure profiles
in recorder playing”, International Symposium on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, 2011.

Papiotis, P., Marchini, M., Maestre, E., Pérez, A. “Measuring ensemble synchrony through violin
performance parameters: a preliminary progress report”, Intetain Workshop on Social Behavior in
Music, 2011.
Coleman, G., Bonada J., Maestre, E. “Adding Dynamic Smoothing to Mixture Mosaicing Synthesis”,
Spars11: Workshop on Signal Processing with Adaptive Sparse Structure Representations, 2011.
Villavicencio, F., Maestre E. “GMM-PCA based speaker-timbre conversion on full-quality speech”,
Interspeech Speech Synthesis Workshop, 2010.
Coleman, G., Maestre, E., Bonada, J. “Augmenting sound mosacing with descriptor-driven transformation”,
International Conference on Digital Audio Effects, 2010.
Ramírez, R., Neocleous, A., Pérez, A., Maestre, E. “Modeling emotions in violin audio recordings”,
ACM Workshop on Music and Machine Learning, 2010.
Maestre, E., Pérez, A., Ramírez, R. “Gesture sampling for instrumental sound synthesis: violin
bowing as a case study”, International Computer Music Conference, 2010.
Ramírez, R., Maestre, E. “A framework for performer identification in audio recordings”, International
Workshop on Machine Learning and Music, 2009.
Guaus, E., Bonada, J., Maestre, E., Pérez, A., Blaauw, M. “Calibration method to accurately measure
bow force in real violin performances”, International Computer Music Conference, 2009.
Camurri, A., Bevilacqua, F., Bresin, R., Maestre, E., Penttinen, H., Seppänen, J., Välimäki, V.,
Volpe, G., Warusfel, O. “Embodied music listening and making in context-aware mobile applications:
the EU-ICT SAME Project”, Gesture Workshop, 2009.
Maestre, E. “Statistical modeling of violin bowing parameter contours”, International Computer
Music Conference, 2009.
Camurri, A., Volpe, G., Vinet, H., Bresin, R., Maestre, E., Llop, J., Kleimola, J., Oksanen, S.,
Välimäki, V., Seppänen, J. “User-centric context-aware mobile applications for embodied music listening”,
International ICST Conference on User Centric Media, 2009.
Kersten, S., Maestre, E., Ramírez, R. “Concatenative synthesis of expressive saxophone performance”,
Sound and Music Computing Conference, 2008.
Pérez, A., Maestre, E., Ramírez, R., Kersten, S. “Expressive irish fiddle performance model informed
with bowing”, International Computer Music Conference, 2008.
Pérez, A., Bonada, J., Maestre, E., Guaus, E., Blaauw, M. “Measuring violin sound radiation for
sound equalization”, Acoustics’08 Paris, 2008.
Ramírez, R., Pérez, A., Maestre, E., Kersten, E., Rizo, D., Román, P., Iñesta, J.M. “Modeling celtic
violin expressive performance”, International Conference on Machine Learning, 2008.
Ramírez, R., Pérez, A., Kersten, S., Maestre, E. “Performer identification in celtic violin recordings”,
International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, 2008.
Pérez, A., Bonada, J., Maestre, E., Guaus, E., Blaauw, M. “Score Level Timbre Transformations of
Violin Sounds”, International Conference on Digital Audio Effects, 2008.
Maestre, E., Bonada, J., Blaauw, M., Pérez, A., Guaus, E. “Acquisition of violin instrumental gestures
using a commercial EMF device”, International Computer Music Conference, 2007.
Jensenius, A., Castagné, N., Camurri, A., Maestre, E., Malloch, J., McGilvray, D. “A summary of formats
for streaming and storing music-related movement and gesture data”, International Conference
on Enactive Interfaces, 2007.
Pérez, A., Bonada, J., Maestre, E., Guaus, E., Blaauw, M. “Combining performance actions with
spectral models for violin sound transformation”, International Congress on Acoustics, 2007.
Ramírez, R., Maestre, E., Pertusa, A. “Identifying saxophonists from their playing styles”, AES 30th
Conference, 2007.
Guaus, E., Bonada, J., Pérez, A., Maestre, E., Blaauw, M. “Measuring the bow pressing force in a
real violin performance”, International Symposium on Musical Acoustics, 2007.
Pérez, A., Maestre, E., Ramírez, R. “Modeling Expressive Performance in Classical Violin”, Digital
Music Research Network Workshop, 2007.
Kersten, S., Maestre, E., Ramírez, R. “Modeling and Synthesis of Expressive Performance”, Digital
Music Research Network Workshop, 2007.

Janer, J., Maestre, E. “Phonetic-based mappings in voice-driven sound synthesis”, International
Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications, 2007.
Jensenius, A., Camurri, A., Castagné, N., Maestre, E., Malloch, J., McGilvray, D., Schwarz, D.,
Wright, M. “The need of formats for streaming and storing music-related movement and gesture
data”, International Computer Music Conference, 2007.
Ramírez, R., Hazan, A., Maestre, E. “A sequential covering evolutionary algorithm for expressive
music performance”, Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 2006.
Hazan, A., Ramírez, R., Maestre, E., Pérez, A., Pertusa, A. “Modeling expressive performance: a
regression tree approach based on strongly typed genetic programming”, European Workshop on
Evolutionary Music and Art, 2006.
Maestre, E., Bonada, J., Mayor, O. “Modeling musical articulation gestures in singing voice performances”,
AES 121th Convention, 2006.
Maestre, E., Hazan, A., Ramírez, R., Pérez, A. “Using concatenative synthesis for expressive performance
in jazz saxophone”, International Computer Music Conference, 2006.
Maestre, E., Gómez, E. “Automatic characterization of dynamics and articulation of expressive monophonic
recordings”, AES 118th Convention, 2005.
Ramírez, R., Hazan, A., Maestre, E. “Intra-note features prediction model for jazz saxophone performance”,
International Computer Music Conference, 2005.
Ramírez, R., Hazan, A., Gómez, E., Maestre, E. “A machine learning approach to expressive performance
in jazz standards”, ACM International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining,
2004.
Ramírez, R., Hazan, A., Gómez, E., Maestre, E. “Understanding expressive transformations in saxophone
jazz performances using inductive machine learning”, Sound and Music Computing Conference,
2004.
Referees Xavier Serra Julius O. Smith III
Professor Professor
Universitat Pompeu Fabra Stanford University
Barcelona, Spain Stanford, USA