Rendering Audio Using Expressive MIDI

Welburn SJ, Plumbley MD. Rendering Audio Using Expressive MIDI. In: AES Convention 127. Audio Engineering Society; 2009. Paper 7862. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=15057

@inproceedings{Welburn2009_15057,
  author = {Welburn, Stephen J. and Plumbley, Mark D.},
  title = {{Rendering Audio Using Expressive MIDI}},
  booktitle = {AES Convention 127},
  note = {Paper 7862},
  year = {2009},
  month = oct,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=15057}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Rendering Audio Using Expressive MIDI
AU  - Welburn, Stephen J.
AU  - Plumbley, Mark D.
T2  - AES Convention 127
M1  - Paper 7862
PY  - 2009
DA  - 2009/10/06
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=15057
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - MIDI renderings of audio are traditionally regarded as lifeless and unnatural - lacking in expression. However, MIDI is simply a protocol for controlling a synthesizer. Lack of expression is caused by either an expressionless synthesizer or by the difficulty in setting the MIDI parameters to provide expressive output. We have developed a system to construct an expressive MIDI representation of an audio signal, i.e. an audio representation which uses tailored pitch variations in addition to the note base pitch parameters which audio-to-MIDI systems usually attempt. A pitch envelope is estimated from the original audio, and a genetic algorithm is then used to estimate pitch modulator parameters from that envelope. These pitch modulations are encoded in a MIDI file and rerendered using a sampler. We present some initial comparisons between the final output audio and the estimated pitch envelopes.
ER  -