For the performance of music, the room surrounding the musician and his or her audience plays an important role: it acts as an acoustical transformer, modifying the sound and thus influencing the perception of player and listeners. For the active performer, this entails a complex interaction between the production and perception of sound. The aim of this experimental study was to investigate the effect of specific room acoustical conditions on aspects of music performance such as "tempo," "loudness," "dynamic bandwidth," or "timbre." Computer models of 14 rooms were generated, corresponding to real halls and representing typical concert venues. Simulated measurements were carried out to determine room acoustical parameters according to ISO 3382-1 as well as new parameters for stage acoustics. Solo performers were recorded while playing in corresponding virtual acoustic environments generated by dynamic binaural synthesis. From these recordings, audio features were extracted to calculate descriptors for different attributes of the musical performance. The influence of room acoustical parameters on performance properties as well as the effect of the musical content and the played instrument was then analyzed based on hierarchical linear models. The analysis revealed distinct concepts of adjustment to room acoustical conditions as well as great individuality with respect to the interaction of musicians with their room acoustical environment.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.