Musical performance. A synthesis‐by‐rule approach

The general purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate some effects on the musical acceptability of a performance of a melody, which may be achieved by means of a synthesis‐by‐rule strategy. Both the structure of a melody and the playing technique of the performer seem important to the music perception and musical performance quality. The synthesis equipment used here consists of a computer controlled synthesizer. The input is the melody written in ordinary notation, and optionally complemented with phrase markers. This is the input material to a text‐to‐speech conversion program [Carlson and Granstrom, in Speech Communication II. edited by G. Fant (Stockholm, 1975) pp. 245‐253] now adapted to for notation‐to‐music conversion. Some of the rules relating the performance to the structure operate on a phase level, and other rules operate on sequences of two or three notes only. As regar‐s production aspects, the influence of a raising of the larynx in singing on the perceived musical quality of the perfo...