AIRS 1st Annual Meeting: 2009

Title: A computer based method for analysing singing
Authors: Stephanie Stadler Elmer (University of Zuerich), Franz-Josef Elmer (University of
Basel, Switzerland)

Abstract

The analysis of singing has been an intricate and serious obstacle in psychology and
ethnomusicology. Singing is a transient and mostly unstable patterning of vocal sounds that is
organised by applying more or less linguistic and musical rules. Traditionally, a sung
performance has been analysed by mere listening and by using the western musical notation for
representing its structure. Since this method neglects any in-between categories with respect to
pitch and time, it proves to be culturally biased. However, acoustic measures as used in speech
analysis have had limited application and were primarily used to quantify isolated parameters
of sung performances. Praat, a computer tool for phonetic analysis by Boersma & Weenink
(2009, http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/), is very powerful and provides musically relevant
information. In order to have a specific computer program for the analysis of singing, we
devised a computer aided method in combination with a new symbolic notation. Our specific
focus concerns the analysis and representation of the organisation of pitch in relation to the
syllables of the lyrics, and its temporal structure. The computer program provides detailed
acoustic measures on pitch and time. We reduce the redundancy of the detailed information by
a notation system that shows pitch and time each on a continuous scale, including glissandi,
breathing, joint singing, and instructional help. The two programs (pitch analyzer, notation
viewer) and detailed instructions are freely available at http://mmatools.sourceforge.net/. By
combining acoustic with auditory analyses, this method allows to describe reliably sung
performance's structures with respect to the organisation of pitches, together with syllables, and
their timing. The resulting configuration of data includes qualitative aspects such as stable and
unstable pitches. Such microanalytic descriptions are very useful for studying the nature of
sung performances, their structures, and processes of change due to learning and development.