Global Musical Tempo Transformations using Case Based ... - OFAI

Chapter 1
Introduction
In this research work, in partial fulfillment of the doctoral programme ‘Informàtica
i communicació digital’ of the Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona,
we present our current work and the goal of our thesis research. We will report
our recent activities of applying a problem solving technique called Case
Based Reasoning (CBR) in the area of expressive music processing. To provide
a broader perspective for this work, we will give an overview of past
and current research in the field of music performance research and CBR.
Finally, based on the current state of our research work, we will propose
some concrete lines of work to fulfill the research goals.
In the rest of this chapter, we will introduce the field of expressive music
research, and musical tempo transformations as a special kind of this
research. In chapter 2, we will have a more detailed look at some topics
in music performance research. We will pay attention to more fundamental
and cognitive/psychological research as well as review various approaches to
expressive music generation by computational means. In chapter 3, we will
introduce Case Based Reasoning (CBR), a problem solving approach that we
believe is suitable for application in the domain of musical expression processing.
The research-goals of this research will be presented in chapter 4. In
chapter 5, we will describe a technique for realizing tempo transformations of
musical phrases, that is, generating a performance for a given score at a certain
tempo, given a performance of that score at a different tempo. Finally,
in chapter 6, we will present conclusions and propose future research.
1.1 Expressiveness in Musical Performances
It has been long established that when humans perform music from score,
the result is never a literal, mechanical rendering of the score (the so called
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