Abstract
This paper proposes a method for the automatic rendition of performances without losing any characteristics of the specific performer. In many of existing methods, users are required to input expertise such as possessed by the performer. Although they are useful in support of users'own performances, they are not suitable for the purpose of this proposal. The proposed method defines a model that associates the feature quantities of expression extracted from the case of actual performance with its directions that can be surely retrieved from musical score without using expertise. By classifying expressive tendency of the expression of the model for each case of performance using the criteria based on score directions, the rules that elucidate the causal relationship between the performer's specific performance expression and the score directions systematically can be structured. The candidates of the performance cases corresponding to the unseen score directions is obtained by tracing this structure. Dynamic programming is applied to solve the problem of searching the sequence of performance cases with the optimal expression from among these candidates. Objective evaluations indicated that the proposed method is able to efficiently render optimal performances. From subjective evaluations, the quality of rendered expression by the proposed method was confirmed. It was also shown that the characteristics of the performer could be reproduced even in various compositions. Furthermore, performances rendered via the proposed method have won the first prize in the autonomous section of a performance rendering contest for computer systems.
