What is the music performance evaluation?
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Music performance evaluation is the feedback of judges on the parameters (i.e., tempo, timing, dynamics, intonation, and sound quality) that the performer is tasked with interpreting the musical score, and translates into an acoustic representation.
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Evaluation of musical performance is a highly subjective task that relies on experts to evaluate aspects of a performer's technical, musical expression, and overall perception.
Piano performance evaluation
The list of 15 elements of piano performance evaluation
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Fingering, phrasing, dynamics, timing, pedaling, interpretation, emotional expression, rubato, melodic accuracy, rhythm accuracy, articulation, tone quality, musical structure, style, and overall flow
Difference Between Hands (DBH) from the Piano Performance
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Utilizing both hands fluently is considered to be fundamental for a pianist. Due to the nature of the piano keyboard, the balance of high and low tones reflects how well both hands are controlled.
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A highly skilled pianist performance the accentuated notes not only louder but also approximately 20~30ms before the other notes.
Automatic Piano Performance evaluation
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The process compares the performance with the original musical score to determine and quantify how faithfully it was played.
Piano performance analysis and evaluation research in MARG
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Abstract
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Quantitative evaluation of piano performance is of interest in many fields, including music education and computational performance rendering. Previous studies utilized features extracted from audio or musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) files but did not address the difference between hands (DBH), which might be an important aspect of high-quality performance. Therefore, we investigated DBH as an important factor determining performance proficiency. To this end, 34 experts and 34 amateurs were recruited to play two excerpts on a Yamaha Disklavier. Each performance was recorded in MIDI, and handcrafted features were extracted separately for the right hand (RH) and left hand (LH). These were conventional MIDI features representing temporal and dynamic attributes of each note and computed as absolute values (e. g., MIDI velocity) or ratios between performance and corresponding scores (e. g., ratio of duration or inter-onset interval (IOI)). These note-based features were rearranged into additional features representing DBH by simple subtraction between features of both hands. Statistical analyses showed that DBH was more significant in experts than in amateurs across features. Regarding temporal features, experts pressed keys longer and faster with the RH than did amateurs. Regarding dynamic features, RH exhibited both greater values and a smoother change along with melodic intonations in experts than in amateurs. Further experiments using principal component analysis (PCA) and support vector machine (SVM) verified that hand-difference features can successfully differentiate experts from amateurs according to performance proficiency. Moreover, existing note-based raw feature values (Basic features) and DBH features were tested repeatedly via 10-fold cross-validation, suggesting that adding DBH features to Basic features improved F1 scores to 93.6% (by 3.5%) over Basic features. Our results suggest that differently controlling both hands simultaneously is an important skill for pianists; therefore, DBH features should be considered in the quantitative evaluation of piano performance.
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Abstract
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The present study aimed to scrutinize the correlation between the difference between the right and left hands and the music score attributes as factors of the proficiency of the piano for evaluating quantitative performance. And to analyze the possibility of the feature in terms of the automatic performance evaluation system.
Contact
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ksarah1984@snu.ac.kr (Sarah Kim, Ph.D. candidates)