Motion analysis for emotional performance of snare drums using a Motion Averaging Method

Abstract

Proposed here is a "Motion Averaging Method", for the analysis of motion data of musical performance on expressing emotion obtained by a motion capture system. The method is made to analyze the motion on expressing any emotion on playing the snare drum. Specifically, the motions for an etude with each of emotion (tenderness/happiness/anger/fear/sadness) played by three trained percussionists were recorded by using a motion capture system. Obtained data (*.trc) were corrected and then adjusted among them by shifting and rotating player's position, so as to compensate the difference of position of players on recording. Moreover, the difference among each performance in time is uniformed by stretching (expanding or contracting) the motion data based on the impact time of the performance. Expanded or contracted data were then averaged for each emotion. Obtained motion is called an "averaged motion", which shows common motion of the performance on expressing each of an emotion. Features of the averaged motions for each emotion are measured by observing differences and tendencies among each player were investigated. This study shows a list of features of motion on playing the snare drum by three trained players. We also discuss about the application of the method.

Expertise-Related Differences in Cyclic Motion Patterns in Drummers: A Kinematic Analysis

“…Although pianists were preferred subjects in MoCap studies, mostly due to the visibility of finger-and hand movements with camera systems and to the ease of recording the playing using MIDI-technology MoCap has been used in the last years also in other instrumentalists, for examples in string players (Shan et al, 2007;Schoonderwaldt and Altenmüller, 2014;Ancillao et al, 2017;Hopper et al, 2017) and wood-wind players (e.g., Albrecht et al, 2014) yielding interesting results in terms of precision of timing of movements. In the last years increasing interest emerged in measurements of musician's movements during ensemble synchronization (e.g., Demos et al, 2017, for a review see Keller et al, 2014) and in and emotional gesturing of musicians (e.g., Masanobu et al, 2012). Since these measurements did not attempt to assess changes related to increasing expertise, we do not further review this work here.…”