Modelling note’s pitch and duration in trained professional singers

Abstract

Abstract Performing musical notes correctly does not mean that all the performers will play the notes at the exact same pitch and duration. However, it does imply that they are performing the notes within acceptable psychoacoustic ranges. Therefore, this article aims to find the range of a note’ duration and pitch according to its position in a piece of music by analysing several parameters in trained-professional singers’ behaviours in singing notes. To achieve the goal, the variations of eight variables on 2688 solo singing recorded files by trained professional singers were investigated to find the relationships between a performed note’s F0 and duration with these variables. The variables considered in this study are the interval to the following and previous notes, the existence of rest before or after the note, the note’s MIDI pitch code and duration in a music score, and the particular singing technique applied. The Bayesian hierarchical model was used to find the effect of the variables on the pitch and duration of a note sung by professionals, mainly in opera style, singers. The investigation confirms that these parameters affect the pitch and duration of notes performed by professional singers. Finally, this paper proposes formulas to calculate the pitch frequency and duration of the notes according to the variables to simulate the behaviour of the trained-professional singers in performing notes’ pitches and duration.

Keywords

• Singing modelling
• Pitch accuracy
• Singing accuracy
• Note’ duration accuracy
• Pitch drift
• Singing analyses