Here we post some examples of software created for Scottish Voices projects.
Software for the Digital Hurdy-Gurdy
The software driving our “digital hurdy-gurdy” was a project of the Science and Music Research Group (SMRG) of Glasgow University’s Engineering School, directed by Dr Nick Bailey. We call the instrument colloquially the SMRGyGurdy.
The code was written by Science and Music Research Group graduate Dr Graham Percival, during his PhD candidacy at SMRG, under the supervision of Dr Bailey. The software is based on Dr Percival’s Artifistring project, with some updates by Dr Bailey – Click Here
The code is released on Github – Click Here
Software for Frequency-tracking in Audiofiles
The software for frequency-tracking in audiofiles was a project developed at the Science and Music Research Group (SMRG) of Glasgow University’s Engineering School, directed by Dr Nick Bailey.
The code was written by Science and Music Research Group graduate Dr Keziah Milligan, during her PhD candidacy at SMRG, under the supervision of Dr Bailey. Dr Milligan’s PhD thesis is availble online ––Click Here
Keziah Milligan wrote a highly-selective method of discovering note onset automatically while simultaneously achieving a high pitch accuracy. This is not possible using conventional techniques, where there is always a compromise between the two measurements. Her detectors, based on Hopf Bifurcations (a similar process is involved in human perception) and implemented in a multi-core library allows the detectors to run in real-time on modest computers.
The code is released on Github – Click Here
Using Praat to Track the Performance of Microtonal Singing
On our media/video page can be found two videos of graphs showing details of the pitch trajectories of performances by soprano Julia Daramy-Williams and mezzo soprano Lynn Bellamy of the song Azrail from Graham Hair’s song-cycle Sufi Fragments (for soprano, mezzo-soprano and digital harmonium). An audiofile of the performance is uploaded to our media/audio page, and the score is uploaded to our media/scores page.
The song is composed using the 19-EDO scale (with 19 equal divisions of the octave). The digital harmonium part conforms rigidly to this scale. The singers’ intonation, however, is (of course) “free” … in the sense that they are adapting their intonation to the harmonies of the digital harmonium part as the performance proceeds, note by note.
The graph also shows a best approximation to the rhythmic placement of the onset of each note by each singer, in relation to the precise rhythmic placement of each note as determined by the score, and as performed (precisely) by the digital harmonium part.
Each graph was created by the Director of the Science and Music Group, Dr Nick Bailey, using the we-established software program Praat (see www.praat.org). Automatic detection of onsets is another story! But we’re working on it!