Three real-time gesture controlled vocal instruments are presented. They are based on a time doma... more Three real-time gesture controlled vocal instruments are presented. They are based on a time domain (LF) and a spectral domain (CALM) model of the glottal pulse signal. Gestural control is able to add expression to the synthetic voices, enabling simulation of various vocal behaviors. Expressive vocal instruments are demonstrated for musical and research purposes.
In this paper, we describe our pioneering work in developing speech synthesis beyond the Text-To-... more In this paper, we describe our pioneering work in developing speech synthesis beyond the Text-To-Speech paradigm. We introduce tangible speech synthesis as an alternate way of envisioning how artificial speech content can be produced. Tangible speech synthesis refers to the ability, for a given system, to provide some physicality and interactivity to important speech production parameters. We present MAGE, our
2013 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, 2013
ABSTRACT The problem of pitch tracking has been extensively studied in the speech research commun... more ABSTRACT The problem of pitch tracking has been extensively studied in the speech research community. The goal of this paper is to investigate how these techniques should be adapted to singing voice analysis, and to provide a comparative evaluation of the most representative state-of-the-art approaches. This study is carried out on a large database of annotated singing sounds with aligned EGG recordings, comprising a variety of singer categories and singing exercises. The algorithmic performance is assessed according to the ability to detect voicing boundaries and to accurately estimate pitch contour. First, we evaluate the usefulness of adapting existing methods to singing voice analysis. Then we compare the accuracy of several pitch-extraction algorithms, depending on singer category and laryngeal mechanism. Finally, we analyze their robustness to reverberation.
Proceedings of the 2014 International Workshop on Movement and Computing - MOCO '14, 2014
ABSTRACT In this paper, we present a comparison between four HMM-based real-time decoding algorit... more ABSTRACT In this paper, we present a comparison between four HMM-based real-time decoding algorithms for stylistic gait recognition and following. The approach is based on a probabilistic modelling of walking gestures recorded through motion capture. The algorithms are evaluated on their ability to recover the progression of the performed gestures over time in real-time, i.e. as the gestures are performed, and their robustness when the decoding is only performed on a subset of the model dimensions. The performance of studied algorithms are also evaluated in the context of a framework for "gait reconstruction", i.e. where the walking gestures recognised on lower body dimensions are used to synchronously regenerate the upper body dimensions (and vice-versa).
Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems - CHI EA '11, 2011
Vocal production is one of the most ubiquitous and expressive activities of people, yet understan... more Vocal production is one of the most ubiquitous and expressive activities of people, yet understanding its production and synthesis remains elusive. When vocal synthesis is elevated to include new forms of singing and sound production, fundamental changes to culture and musical expression emerge. Nowadays, Text-To-Speech (TTS) synthesis seems unable to suggest innovative solutions for new computing trends, such as mobility,
Three real-time gesture controlled vocal instruments are presented. They are based on a time doma... more Three real-time gesture controlled vocal instruments are presented. They are based on a time domain (LF) and a spectral domain (CALM) model of the glottal pulse signal. Gestural control is able to add expression to the synthetic voices, enabling simulation of various vocal behaviors. Expressive vocal instruments are demonstrated for musical and research purposes.
In this paper, we describe our pioneering work in developing speech synthesis beyond the Text-To-... more In this paper, we describe our pioneering work in developing speech synthesis beyond the Text-To-Speech paradigm. We introduce tangible speech synthesis as an alternate way of envisioning how artificial speech content can be produced. Tangible speech synthesis refers to the ability, for a given system, to provide some physicality and interactivity to important speech production parameters. We present MAGE, our
2013 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, 2013
ABSTRACT The problem of pitch tracking has been extensively studied in the speech research commun... more ABSTRACT The problem of pitch tracking has been extensively studied in the speech research community. The goal of this paper is to investigate how these techniques should be adapted to singing voice analysis, and to provide a comparative evaluation of the most representative state-of-the-art approaches. This study is carried out on a large database of annotated singing sounds with aligned EGG recordings, comprising a variety of singer categories and singing exercises. The algorithmic performance is assessed according to the ability to detect voicing boundaries and to accurately estimate pitch contour. First, we evaluate the usefulness of adapting existing methods to singing voice analysis. Then we compare the accuracy of several pitch-extraction algorithms, depending on singer category and laryngeal mechanism. Finally, we analyze their robustness to reverberation.
Proceedings of the 2014 International Workshop on Movement and Computing - MOCO '14, 2014
ABSTRACT In this paper, we present a comparison between four HMM-based real-time decoding algorit... more ABSTRACT In this paper, we present a comparison between four HMM-based real-time decoding algorithms for stylistic gait recognition and following. The approach is based on a probabilistic modelling of walking gestures recorded through motion capture. The algorithms are evaluated on their ability to recover the progression of the performed gestures over time in real-time, i.e. as the gestures are performed, and their robustness when the decoding is only performed on a subset of the model dimensions. The performance of studied algorithms are also evaluated in the context of a framework for "gait reconstruction", i.e. where the walking gestures recognised on lower body dimensions are used to synchronously regenerate the upper body dimensions (and vice-versa).
Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems - CHI EA '11, 2011
Vocal production is one of the most ubiquitous and expressive activities of people, yet understan... more Vocal production is one of the most ubiquitous and expressive activities of people, yet understanding its production and synthesis remains elusive. When vocal synthesis is elevated to include new forms of singing and sound production, fundamental changes to culture and musical expression emerge. Nowadays, Text-To-Speech (TTS) synthesis seems unable to suggest innovative solutions for new computing trends, such as mobility,
Electric guitar is one of the most emblematic musical instruments. It benefits from a large commu... more Electric guitar is one of the most emblematic musical instruments. It benefits from a large community that constantly extends its frontiers by improving playing technique and adding control surfaces. This leads people to try to understand the specific sound produced by this instrument. Unfortunately a guitar is a very complex system and precise models are not available yet. This work focuses on palm muting, one of the most known electric guitar techniques. This technique is produced when the palm of the picking hand is used to damp the strings and this can have a strong effect on the timbre and dynamics of sound. However there are not known sensors or sound analysis techniques to precisely measure this effect. We introduce a new approach of sensing performance gestures by using pressure sensors between the strings. We explored several designs for the sensing system and have performed preliminary experiments on the relationship between the palm pressure, the sound and the behavior of the picking hand.
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Papers by Nicolas d'Alessandro