P1-10: Musical Micro-Timing for Live Coding
Max Johnson (University of Cambridge), Mark R H Gotham (Durham)*
Subjects (starting with primary): Applications -> music composition, performance, and production ; Musical features and properties -> rhythm, beat, tempo ; MIR fundamentals and methodology -> symbolic music processing ; Computational musicology -> mathematical music theory ; Human-centered MIR -> human-computer interaction
Presented In Person: 4-minute short-format presentation
Micro-timing is an essential part of human music-making, yet it is absent from most computer music systems. Partly to address this gap, we present a novel system for generating music with style-specific micro-timing within the Sonic Pi live coding language. We use a probabilistic approach to control the exact timing according to patterns discovered in new analyses of existing micro-timing data (jembe drumming and Viennese waltz). This implementation also required the introduction of musical metre into Sonic Pi. The new metre and micro-timing systems are inherently flexible, and thus open to a wide range of creative possibilities including (but not limited to): creating new micro-timing profiles for additional styles; expanded definitions of metre; and the free mixing of one micro-timing style with the musical content of another. The code is freely available as a Sonic Pi plug-in and released open source at https://github.com/MaxTheComputerer/sonicpi-metre.
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