Andreas Arzt,
"Score Following with Dynamic Time Warping. An Automatic Page-Turner"
, 2-2008
Original Titel:
Score Following with Dynamic Time Warping. An Automatic Page-Turner
Sprache des Titels:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
Every pianist is familiar with the problem: Whether at practicing or during a concert it is often
difficult to turn the pages of the score but at least it’s disturbing. To solve this problem the
Viennese company Quidenus invented a device which, controlled by a foot switch, turns pages
of musical scores. The idea behind this master thesis is to go even further and to automatize
this process completely by using a state-of-the-art score following algorithm.
Score following, the process of following a musical performance with respect to the score
live and in realtime, is being researched intensely since the mid 1980s. Many methods were
proposed, starting with string matching techniques, leading recently to probabilistic algo-
rithms often based on hidden markov models.
In this thesis extensions to a known online algorithm based on dynamic time warping are
presented which improve both precision and stability. As the structure of a musical piece is
fixed in principle but sometimes changed spontaneously by the pianist, a further extension
is presented which based on multiple matching algorithms running simultaneously tries to
recognize these changes.
The result of this master thesis is an easy to use program which, connected to the page turner
hardware using USB, follows the score and sends the signal to turn the pages on predefined
positions.
Forschungs-