Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Percussive Sound'

Questa tesi riguarda nuovi metodi di rappresentazione del segnale nel dominio tempo-frequenza, tali da mostrare le informazioni ricercate come dimensioni esplicite di un nuovo spazio. In particolare due trasformate sono introdotte: lo Spazio di Miscelazione Bivariato (Bivariate Mixture Space) e il Campo della Struttura Spettro-Temporale (Spectro-Temporal Structure-Field). La prima trasformata mira a evidenziare le componenti latenti di un segnale bivariato basandosi sul comportamento di ogni componente frequenziale (ad esempio a fini di separazione delle sorgenti); la seconda trasformata mira invece all'incapsulamento di informazioni relative al vicinato di un punto in R^2 in un vettore associato al punto stesso, tale da descrivere alcune proprietà topologiche della funzione di partenza. Nel dominio dell'elaborazione digitale del segnale audio, il Bivariate Mixture Space può essere interpretato come un modo di investigare lo spazio stereofonico per operazioni di separazione delle sorgenti o di estrazione di informazioni, mentre lo Spectro-Temporal Structure-Field può essere usato per ispezionare lo spazio spettro-temporale (segregare suoni percussivi da suoni intonati o tracciae modulazioni di frequenza). Queste trasformate sono studiate e testate anche in relazione allo stato del'arte in campi come la separazione delle sorgenti, l'estrazione di informazioni e la visualizzazione dei dati. Nel campo dell'informatica applicata al suono, queste tecniche mirano al miglioramento della rappresentazione del segnale nel dominio tempo-frequenza, in modo tale da rendere possibile l'esplorazione dello spettro anche in spazi alternativi, quali il panorama stereofonico o una dimensione virtuale che separa gli aspetti percussivi da quelli intonati.
This thesis is about new methods of signal representation in time-frequency domain, so that required information is rendered as explicit dimensions in a new space. In particular two transformations are presented: Bivariate Mixture Space and Spectro-Temporal Structure-Field. The former transform aims at highlighting latent components of a bivariate signal based on the behaviour of each frequency base (e.g. for source separation purposes), whereas the latter aims at folding neighbourhood information of each point of a R^2 function into a vector, so as to describe some topological properties of the function. In the audio signal processing domain, the Bivariate Mixture Space can be interpreted as a way to investigate the stereophonic space for source separation and Music Information Retrieval tasks, whereas the Spectro-Temporal Structure-Field can be used to inspect spectro-temporal dimension (segregate pitched vs. percussive sounds or track pitch modulations). These transformations are investigated and tested against state-of-the-art techniques in fields such as source separation, information retrieval and data visualization. In the field of sound and music computing, these techniques aim at improving the frequency domain representation of signals such that the exploration of the spectrum can be achieved also in alternative spaces like the stereophonic panorama or a virtual percussive vs. pitched dimension.

The combination of percussion and electronic sound provides new possibilities, growing with ever changing and advancing technological capabilities of human interfaces with computers. The purpose of the research is to broaden my performance capability using digital sound technology. My knowledge and experience of this technology will be expanded through preparing works that incorporate it within live performance. This research aims to provide useful insights to other percussionists seeking to develop their abilities through approaching and performing works for percussion and electronics.
Thesis (Masters)
Master of Music Research (MMusRes)
Queensland Conservatorium
Arts, Education and Law
Full Text

This work is concerned with the numerical simulation of percussion instruments based on physical principles. Three novel modular environments for sound synthesis are presented: a system composed of various plates vibrating under nonlinear conditions, a model for a nonlinear double membrane drum and a snare drum. All are embedded in a 3D acoustic environment. The approach adopted is based on the finite difference method, and extends recent results in the field. Starting from simple models, the modular instruments can be created by combining different components in order to obtain virtual environments with increasing complexity. The resulting numerical codes can be used by composers and musicians to create music by specifying the parameters and a score for the systems. Stability is a major concern in numerical simulation. In this work, energy techniques are employed in order to guarantee the stability of the numerical schemes for the virtual instruments, by imposing suitable coupling conditions between the various components of the system. Before presenting the virtual instruments, the various components are individually analysed. Plates are the main elements of the multiple plate system, and they represent the first approximation to the simulation of gongs and cymbals. Similarly to plates, membranes are important in the simulation of drums. Linear and nonlinear plate/membrane vibration is thus the starting point of this work. An important aspect of percussion instruments is the modelling of collisions. A novel approach based on penalty methods is adopted here to describe lumped collisions with a mallet and distributed collisions with a string in the case of a membrane. Another point discussed in the present work is the coupling between 2D structures like plates and membranes with the 3D acoustic field, in order to obtain an integrated system. It is demonstrated how the air coupling can be implemented when nonlinearities and collisions are present. Finally, some attention is devoted to the experimental validation of the numerical simulation in the case of tom tom drums. Preliminary results comparing different types of nonlinear models for membrane vibration are presented.

Territorios is a 15-minute composition for eight percussionists and prerecorded sounds on digital tape. The composer chose this particular instrumentation because of his conviction that percussion and electronic/digital instruments are the most powerful sources of fresh and innovative sound matter that have appeared during this century. This choice also allowed him to challenge the development of a new and consistent rhythmic syntax derived from the internal structure of percussion instruments, which in turn made it possible to establish solid ties between the sound itself and the musical syntax that rules its organization.
Since different tempi are often used simultaneously in Territorios, the performance of the piece requires a set of computer-generated click-tracks carrying individual pulse lines; hearing these pulses through headphones, the performers are able to play the piece in precise tempo.

Ces dernières années ont vu l'émergence de nom- breuses interfaces musicales ayant pour objectif principal d'offrir de nouvelles expériences instru- mentales. La spécification de telles interfaces met généralement en avant l'expertise des musiciens à appréhender des données sensorielles multiples et hétérogènes (visuelles, sonores et tactiles). Ces interfaces mettent ainsi en jeu le traitement de ces différentes données pour la conception de nouveaux modes d'interaction. Cette thèse s'intéresse plus spécifiquement à l'analyse, la modélisation ainsi que la synthèse de situations in- strumentales de percussion. Nous proposons ainsi un système permettant de synthétiser les retours vi- suel et sonore de performances de percussion, dans lesquelles un percussionniste virtuel contrôle des pro- cessus de synthèse sonore. L'étape d'analyse montre l'importance du contrôle de l'extrémité de la mailloche par des percussionnistes ex- perts jouant de la timbale. Cette analyse nécessite la capture préalable des gestes instrumentaux de dif- férents percussionnistes. Elle conduit à l'extraction de paramètres à partir des trajectoires extremité capturées pour diverses variations de jeu. Ces paramètres sont quantitativement évalués par leur capacité à représen- ter ces variations. Le système de synthèse proposé dans ce travail met en oeuvre l'animation physique d'un percussionniste virtuel capable de contrôler des processus de synthèse sonore. L'animation physique met en jeu un nouveau mode de contrôle du modèle physique par la seule spé- cification de la trajectoire extrémité de la mailloche. Ce mode de contrôle est particulièrement pertinent au re- gard de l'importance du contrôle de la mailloche mis en évidence dans l'analyse précédente. L'approche physique adoptée est de plus utilisée pour permettre l'interaction du percussionniste virtuel avec un modèle physique de timbale. En dernier lieu, le système proposé est utilisé dans une perspective de composition musicale. La con- struction de nouvelles situations instrumentales de percussion est réalisée grâce à la mise en oeuvre de partitions gestuelles. Celles-ci sont obtenues par l'assemblage et l'articulation d'unités gestuelles canoniques disponibles dans les données capturées. Cette approche est appliquée à la composition et la synthèse d'exercices de percussion, et evaluée qualitativement par un professeur de percussion.

Doholla or Darbuka is a traditional Arab percussion instrument with a specific restricted secondary role. My project aims to challenge this role and expand the possibilities and horizons of this instrument by using it as a solo instrument breaking the norms and expectations ruling the instrument. My research focuses on answering the following question: can I present this instrument as a solo or main instrument? I used different methods to experiment with the instrument, including but not limited to, exploring sounds on parts of the instrument’s body that were not used before to create new sounds, or switching the classical loop role of the instrument with a new more varied one. In addition to using techniques that are from different cultures and others that are specific to other percussion instruments in general. As a result, I came to find a wide collection of new sounds that can be used in different contexts, which can be utilized in composing vibrant compositions. I was also able to compose and perform solo compositions with doholla/ darbuka that are written specifically to present the instrument’s richness as well as compositions where doholla had the main changing part while another melodic instrument was providing the background loop role. And finally I managed to prove that this instrument could exist successfully outside its traditionally known boundaries.

George Oro: Darboka, Doholla

Jiro Kevork: Drums

Liliana Zavala: Conga

Mårten Hillbom: Drums

Composition 6; Composition 9; Dueto; Longa Nahawand; Solo; Trio; ss;Two Darboka

碩士
國立屏東科技大學
機械工程系所
104
There are many types of percussion instruments that can be categorized as the tuned and un-tuned; however, there is no proper sound quality evaluation method to quantify percussion instruments. This work aims to perform vibro-acoustic analysis on the harmonic sound plate (HSP) developed by adopting structural vibration analysis and optimum design method. The percussion sound spectrum from HSP can then be predicted and used to obtain objective evaluation index that will be compared with subjective evaluation. The evaluation methodology can also be adopted for other percussion instrument as well. This work applies finite element analysis (FEA) to determine structural vibration modes of HSP as well as the air-structure coupling modes. Both structural vibration modes and air-structure acoustic modes can be, respectively, interpreted. Through literature reviews on various musical sound quality evaluations for different musical instruments, this work builds up the objective evaluation indices, in particular for percussion instruments, such as pitch frequency, tonality, continuity and spectrum centroid. Sound simulation program module is developed to generate the sound response with the knowledge of sound spectrum information. The subjective evaluation is conducted by human ears to validate the effectiveness of the program module. Finally, by the integration of sound measurement and sound simulation program modules, the correlation between the subjective and objective evaluation results can be justified and applied to different percussion instruments.

This practice-led research inquiry explores the field of ‘Sculptural Percussion’ as defined in a series of works created by Rosemary Joy between 2008-2014. Taking the form of a performance and an accompanying exegesis, the research investigates sculptural percussion as a means of creating subtle and transformative effects on the musician and the audience. Performed by percussionists on sculptures that primarily comprise handmade elements and found objects, the works are mostly performed in front of a deliberately small audience. The research explores a number of artistic strategies, which together encourage a sense of intimacy and connection between audience, musician and sculpture in the performance of sculptural percussion. Informed by perspectives drawn from phenomenology, relational aesthetics and contemporary sound theory, the exegesis details key aspects of Joy’s sculptural percussion works including the scale of audience and sculpture, the proximity of the audience to the musician, ideas around site specificity and the interaction of visual and aural perception to create a focussed listening experience. The historical and theoretical context of the work is examined through discussion of Fluxus experiments with performance; Cage’s broadening of the possibilities of contemporary music and R. Murray Schafer’s ‘ear cleaning’. In defining the terms ‘sculptural percussion’ and ‘percussive sculptures’ the work is situated in relation to the fields of both sound art and percussion. Part of a discernible trend towards deliberately small audiences, the research contributes to the understanding of performance events that make sculpture central to the creation of music. The research makes a particular contribution to the field of percussion, where the possibilities of audience proximity and sculpture have not been thoroughly investigated. The relative weighting of the components of the thesis is as follows: 70% creative component; 30% exegesis.

Thesis (M.M.) -- Florida State University, 2003.
Advisor: Ladislav Kubik, Florida State University, School of Music. Title and description from thesis home page (viewed 9-27-04). Document formatted into pages; contains 31 pages. Includes biographical sketch.

碩士
國立屏東科技大學
機械工程系所
97
The metallophone is one of percussion instruments. The percussion sound of a metalophone consists of the fundamental frequency and overtone frequencies that are related to the vibration modes of the metallophone. This work presents the geometry design of the metallophone with C chord sound characteristics. The Bezier’s curve formulation is adopted to generate smooth curves so as to construct the finite element model of the metallophone. By performing modal analysis the natural frequencies and mode shapes can be obtained. The sound generation mechanism can be interpreted by mode shape patterns. This work designs two types of metallophones that can generate the C chord sound. Both aluminum and stainless steel materials are used to shape the designed metallophones. The microphone is used as the sensor to measure the percussion sound and characterize the modal properties of the metallophones. The sound spectrum can be obtained and identified those peak frequencies that are used to correlate and adjust the finite element model. Results show that the finite element model can be well calibrated. The finite element model is then adopted to carry out geometry design modification. The scaled thickness and geometry shapes can change the modal properties in a scale relation. This work establishes the design method for the C chord metallophone and validates the design by experimental measurements. The developed methodology will be beneficial to the design of specific types of metallophones, in particular for different chord combinations.

碩士
國立屏東科技大學
機械工程系所
101
A pair of finger cymbals is played by hanging them horizontally and gently striking the outer edge of cymbals together. The percussion sound reveals sharp and clear. This work aims to study the vibration and sound characteristics of finger cymbal. First, the sound measurement program is used to measure the percussion sound of small cymbals. Single cymbal is struck by different stick heads to produce the percussion sound that is measured to record the time domain response and analyzed by fast Fourier transform (FFT) to obtain the frequency spectrum. The peak amplitudes of frequency contents can be identified for the fundamental frequency and overtone. The impact sound between two cymbals is also studied. The finite element (FE) model for the finger cymbal is then constructed to perform modal analysis so as to obtain natural frequencies and their corresponding mode shapes. Base on the measured resonant frequencies from the sound measurement, the FE model can be updated to be equivalent to the real structure for model verification. The vibration characteristics can be identified from finite element analysis (FEA) and shown the relation between the percussion sound and vibration modes. This work shows the application of model verification by FEA and sound measurement to identify the vibration characteristics of finger cymbal and correlate to its percussion sound .The analgfical approach can be applied to other musical instrument as well.

碩士
中國文化大學
中國音樂學系
104
This paper studies the Western and Eastern contemporary percussion compositions of the same year, including Festive Percussion by Su Wen-Cheng, Cold Pressed by Dave Hollinden in 1990 and Eight Sounds in Harmony by Wang Yi-Dong and Canned Heat by Eckhard Kopetzki in 2003. This paper discusses and compares the above Western and Eastern percussion compositions. The paper is divided into four chapters. The first chapter, introduction, includes motivation, purpose, contents of the study and methods, steps, and literature review. The second chapter is the introduction and comparison of the Eastern and Western compositions of 1990. Next, the third chapter is the introduction and comparison of the Eastern and Western compositions of 2003. The above chapters all include introduction of the composers, background, analysis, notation and performing of the compositions, along with the author’s own interpretations and comparison. Finally, the last chapter is the conclusion. From the study of the composing and materials of the compositions and tone of the instruments, the author can see the different styles and features of Eastern and Western compositions, which helps to interpret and perform different pieces in the future. Finally, this paper is written in hope of providing future references for percussion performers and composers. Key words: multiple percussion compositions, Festive Percussion, Cold Pressed, Eight Sounds in Harmony, Canned Heat

碩士
國立臺南大學
音樂學系碩士在職專班
107
In the 1960’s, the idea of Minimalism rose in the United States, which utilizes as less elements as possible in the art field. Music that features this technique is identified as 「Minimal Music」or「Repetitive Music」. This thesis studies the origin of Minimalism and Minimal Music, as well as the composers’ lives and works related to this style. They are La Monte Young(1935-), Terry Riley (1935-), Stephen Reich( 1936-), Philip Glass (1937-), and John Adams (1947-). The Minimalism in the music of Philip Glass is focused in this study, taking 《Music in Contrary Motion, 1969》 and 《Music in Similar Motion, 1969》as examples. The rhythmic and melodic motives, formal structures, repetition patterns are explored in detail. An original composition,《The Sound of Rain, 2018》that also uses minimalism is then provided. Some conclusions of this thesis include: 1. Minimalism is to express the purity of human mind deep inside. 2. Minimal Music seeks for objective art. 3.《Music in Contrary Motion, 1969》 and 《Music in Similar Motion, 1969》represent the iconic compositions of Minimalism. 4. Philip Glass perceives Minimal Music as endless repetitions in「Open Form」. 5. Philip Glass perceives composers and performers are both participating the process of creating a composition, not just the composers. 6. An original composition,《The Sound of Rain, 2018》in Minimalism is provided for future reference.. Keywords: Minimalism, Minimal Music, 《Music in Contrary Motion》,《Music in Similar Motion》, 《The Sound of Rain》

abstract: ABSTRACT As a composer, Chou Wen-Chung (1923-2019) was a learner and inheritor of Chinese traditional music culture and was committed to carrying it forward. As a native of China who had his primary musical training in the West, Chou Wen-Chung was one of the first Chinese composers to make his mark on Western music. He successfully combined Western elements and Chinese tradition in his music. Chou Wen-Chung was one of the few prominent East Asian composers known in the Western musical world, and his music therefore has had a strong influence on other Chinese composers. In order to understand more clearly his music, I analyzed his chamber work: Yü Ko. This piece was composed in 1965 for 9 instruments: Violin, Alto Flute, English Horn, Bass Clarinet, 2 Trombones, 2 Percussion and Piano. Inspired by the ancient Chinese musical instrument the Qin (also called guqin, or “ancient qin”), which is a plucked seven-string instrument, Chou Wen-Chung composed Yü Ko. Literally meaning “fisherman’s song,” this work was composed originally for the Qin, based on a melody composed by Mao Min-Zhong who was a very noted scholar and Qin player of the late Southern Song dynasty (C.E.1127-1276). This paper provides Chou Wen-Chung’s biography, compositional styles and developments. It lists and explains the most common Chinese traditional cultural elements which he used in his compositions. In particular, it introduces the Qin in detail from the external structure, performance techniques, sound characteristics, the tablature notation, and compositional methods. This document also includes a detailed analysis of Yü Ko in terms of the orchestration, pitch, tonal material, structure and tempo, dynamic and musical materials, and explains Chou Wen-Chung’s imitation of the Qin as well as the influence of Western music shown in this piece.
Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation Music 2020

Music analysis and source separation have become important and allied areas of research over the last decade. Towards this, analyzing a music signal for important events such as onsets, offsets and transients are important problems. These tasks help in music source separation and transcription. Approaches in source separation too have been making great strides, but most of these techniques are aimed at Western music and fail to perform well for Indian music. The fluid style of instrumentation in Indian music requires a slightly modified approach to analysis and source separation. We propose an onset detection algorithm that is motivated by the human auditory system. This algorithm has the advantage of having a unified framework for the detection of both onsets and offsets in music signals. This onset detection algorithm is further extended to detect percussive transients. Percussive transients have sharp onsets followed closely by sharp offsets. This characteristic is exploited in the percussive transients detection algorithm. This detection does not lend itself well to the extraction of transients and hence we propose an iterative algorithm to extract all types of transients from a polyphonic music signal. The proposed iterative algorithm is both fast and accurate to extract transients of various strengths. This problem of transient extraction can be extended to the problem of harmonic/percussion sound separation(HPSS), where a music signal is separated into two streams consisting of components mainly from percussion and harmonic instruments. Many algorithms that have been proposed till date deal with HPSS for Western music. But with Indian classical/film music, a different style of instrumentation or singing is seen, including high degree of vibratos or glissando content. This requires new approaches to HPSS. We propose extensions to two existing HPSS techniques, adapting them for Indian music. In both the extensions, we retain the original framework of the algorithm, showing that it is easy to incorporate the changes needed to handle Indian music. We also propose a new HPSS algorithm that is inspired by our transient extraction technique. This algorithm can be considered a generalized extension to our transient extraction algorithm and showcases our view that HPSS can be considered as an extension to transient analysis. Even the best HPSS techniques have leakages of harmonic components into percussion and this can lead to poor performances in tasks like rhythm analysis. In order to reduce this leakage, we propose a post processing technique on the percussion stream of the HPSS algorithm. The proposed method utilizes signal stitching by exploiting a commonly used model for percussive envelopes. We also developed a vocals extraction algorithm from the harmonic stream of the HPSS algorithm. The vocals extraction follows the popular paradigm of extracting the predominant pitch followed by generation of the vocals signal corresponding to the pitch. We show that HPSS as a pre-processing technique gives an advantage in reducing the interference from percussive sources in the extraction stage. It is also shown that the performance of vocal extraction algorithms improve with the knowledge about locations of the vocal segments. This is shown with the help of an oracle to locate the vocal segments. The use of the oracle greatly reduces the interferences from other dominating sources in the extracted vocals signal.