Musical performance requires motor skills to coordinate the movements of multiple joints in the hand and arm over a wide range of tempi. However, it is unclear whether the coordination of movement across joints would differ for musicians with different skill levels and how inter-joint coordination would vary in relation to music tempo. The present study addresses these issues by examining the kinematics and muscular activity of the hand and arm movements of professional and amateur pianists who strike two keys alternately with the thumb and little finger at various tempi. The professionals produced a smaller flexion velocity at the thumb and little finger and greater elbow pronation and supination velocity than did the amateurs. The experts also showed smaller extension angles at the metacarpo-phalangeal joint of the index and middle fingers, which were not being used to strike the keys. Furthermore, muscular activity in the extrinsic finger muscles was smaller for the experts than for the amateurs. These findings indicate that pianists with superior skill reduce the finger muscle load during keystrokes by taking advantage of differences in proximal joint motion and hand postural configuration. With an increase in tempo, the experts showed larger and smaller increases in elbow velocity and finger muscle co-activation, respectively, compared to the amateurs, highlighting skill level-dependent differences in movement strategies for tempo adjustment. Finally, when striking as fast as possible, individual differences in the striking tempo among players were explained by their elbow velocities but not by their digit velocities. These findings suggest that pianists who are capable of faster keystrokes benefit more from proximal joint motion than do pianists who are not capable of faster keystrokes. The distinct movement strategy for tempo adjustment in pianists with superior skill would therefore ensure a wider range of musical expression.

BackgroundProduction of a variety of finger-key touches in the piano is essential for expressive musical performance. However, it remains unknown how expert pianists control multi-joint finger and arm movements for manipulating the touch. The present study investigated differences in kinematics and kinetics of the upper-limb movements while expert pianists were depressing a key with two different touches: pressed and struck. The former starts key-depression with the finger-tip contacting the key, whereas the latter involves preparatory arm-lift before striking the key. To determine the effect of individual muscular torque (MUS) as well as non-muscular torques on joint acceleration, we performed a series of inverse and forward dynamics computations.ResultsThe pressed touch showed smaller elbow extension velocity, and larger shoulder and finger flexion velocities during key-depression compared with the struck touch. The former touch also showed smaller elbow extension acceleration directly attributed to the shoulder MUS. In contrast, the shoulder flexion acceleration induced by elbow and wrist MUS was greater for the pressed touch than the struck touch. Towards the goal of producing the target finger-key contact dynamics, the pressed and struck touches effectively took advantage of the distal-to-proximal and proximal-to-distal inter-segmental dynamics, respectively. Furthermore, a psychoacoustic experiment confirmed that a tone elicited by the pressed touch was perceived softer than that by the struck touch.ConclusionThe present findings suggest that manipulation of tone timbre depends on control of inter-segmental dynamics in piano keystroke.

Research into music generation and into emulating human musical competence has attracted much attention in the field of computer science. In general, the results of academic research should be verified by assessing `objective effectiveness', which is often represented by a `recognition ratio'. Although `objective effectiveness' is also a requirement for research in music generation, it is meaningless unless subjective requisites are also satisfied. However, it is not easy for researchers to execute subjective evaluations within their individual endeavours. To address this difficulty within the research area of computer systems for generating expressive music performances, the Performance Rendering Contest (Rencon) was created. This is an international competition in which entrants present computer systems and the performances generated are graded, and has been held in conjunction with related international conferences. This paper presents an overview of Rencon history, highlighting the evaluative motivation of each contest. In addition, we discuss the possibilities of a new scientific research field in which future Rencons may play a role

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This paper describes sentiment extraction i n music. Sentiments are based on cognition and perception. In this paper sentiments are extracted from real performance through three steps; transcription, musical primitive analysis and music understanding. in the transcription step, acoustic signal is transformed into notes. Musical primitives such as chord progression, melody, rhythm and tempo are analyzed from the notes using musical knowledge. Musical primitives are meaningful for the atmosphere of music. Sentiments are extracted by firing the heuristic rules representing the relation between musical primitives and sentiments for music understanding.