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Expression of piano timbre: Verbal description and gestural control

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 LA MUSIQUE ET SES INSTRUMENTS / MUSIC AND ITS INSTRUMENTS
Actes du 5ième Colloque de Musicologie Interdisciplinaire / Fifth Conference on Interdisciplinarity Musicology CIM09, Paris France 26-29 oct. 2009

EXPRESSION OF PIANO TIMBRE:

VERBAL DESCRIPTION AND GESTURAL CONTROL

Bernays Michel, Université de Montréal, LIAM*, OICCM†, BRAMS‡, CIRMMT§, michel.bernays@umontreal.ca

Traube Caroline, Université de Montréal, LIAMError! Bookmark not defined., OICCM†, BRAMS‡, CIRMMT§,
caroline.traube@umontreal.ca

RESUME
Etat de l’art en pédagogie musicale
Le geste instrumental, vecteur de créativité pour l’interprète d’une composition, constitue une préoccupation essentielle en
pédagogie musicale avancée. Les pianistes abordent le contrôle gestuel du timbre de façon empirique, dans leur pratique
régulière, et à travers méthodes pédagogiques et traités, où certains maîtres du XXe siècle comme Matthay [26], Neuhaus [28] et
Kochevitski [23], ont souligné l’importance du geste dans le développement du « son » propre au pianiste. Le timbre s’avère ainsi
un paramètre significatif pour les grands pianistes, qui ont su développer un contrôle très pointu de l’instrument grâce à leur
dextérité exceptionnelle, ainsi qu’une sensibilité auditive accrue et formée aux plus subtiles variations. Cette perception fine du
timbre se manifeste par un vocabulaire très détaillé décrivant une vaste palette de nuances [11] : le timbre est qualifié de rond,
brillant, velouté,… [8]. Mais ces termes restent équivoques et conscrits par leur contexte de diffusion, de professeur à élève,
oralement, en acquisition par essais et erreurs. Un timbre donné ne se retrouve alors pas toujours associé consciemment au geste
qui le génère.
Etat de l’art en cognition musicale
Nombre d’études en musicologie systématique et cognitive se sont portées sur l’étude du geste instrumental et son influence sur
l'expressivité dans l'interprétation musicale. Le cas du piano est illustré notamment par les travaux sur l’articulation [35], le
doigté [9] ou le synchronisme [16–18,34]. Mais les corrélations entre geste et timbre au piano restent toujours à établir, et
semblent entravées par la complexité du paramètre timbral et par une conception du contrôle de timbre limitée à la vitesse
d’enfoncement d’une touche (relation étudiée dans [29]).
Objectifs
Cette étude vise à déterminer les paramètres du geste instrumental, les corrélats perceptifs et la description verbale liés au timbre
dans l’interprétation au piano. L'objet de cette étude est donc le « timbre au piano » et non le « timbre du piano ». En particulier,
nous cherchons à déterminer si le vocabulaire descripteur de timbre, sa signification perceptive et le geste producteur des sons
associés forment un consensus parmi les pianistes, à travers l’analyse des relations entre timbre, articulation et registre
dynamique. L’objectif est d’établir des corrélations entre le timbre produit et le geste du pianiste.
Contribution principale
Les verbalisations les plus courantes du timbre au piano ont été sélectionnées parmi un large corpus de descripteurs verbaux [2],
puis soumises à des pianistes de haut niveau ayant pour tâche d’identifier et nommer le timbre à partir d’extraits sonores issus
d’interprétations. Ces dernières ont été accomplies par un pianiste professionnel, invité à jouer trois courtes pièces (composées
spécialement pour l’étude) en les affectant de timbres différents à chaque fois, désignés par les termes brillant, dur, lointain, mat,
plein, rond, scintillant, sombre. Grâce au piano à enregistrement numérique Bösendorfer CEUS, les positions des touches et
vitesses des marteaux ont pu être enregistrées, puis traitées pour en extraire les caractéristiques gestuelles. Les résultats du test de
perception du timbre témoignent d’une capacité d’identification significative (plus d’un tiers de bonnes réponses, soit trois fois
plus que le hasard, p<<0,01), accentuée par une pondération sémantique des réponses s’appuyant sur l’évaluation de similarité
entre paires de descripteurs effectuée par les pianistes participants. Ces derniers semblent ainsi s’accorder sur le sens donné aux
descripteurs de timbre au piano, ou du moins en partager les acceptions sémantiques. L’analyse du geste a indiqué une corrélation
significative du timbre interprété avec certains critères gestuels – enfoncement, recouvrement des touches et usage des pédales
moyens, synchronisme entre amorces de mouvement des touches, leurs maxima d’enfoncement et leur vitesse maximale de
marteau.
Retombées

*
Laboratoire informatique, acoustique, musique, Montréal, Canada.
†
Observatoire international de la création et des cultures musicales, Montréal, Canada.
‡
International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research, Montreal, Canada.
§
Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology, Montreal, Canada.
Ces recherches contribuent à une meilleure compréhension de l’expression du timbre et de l’interprétation au piano. Les
conclusions sur leur relation permettront de développer des procédés didactiques fondés sur des connaissances objectives,
complémentaires des méthodes empiriques. Les paramètres de contrôle timbral pourraient par ailleurs être implémentés dans les
outils de synthèse sonore, par modélisation physique en particulier, et dans des outils d’édition de partitions pour la simulation
instrumentale expressive.
 LA MUSIQUE ET SES INSTRUMENTS / MUSIC AND ITS INSTRUMENTS
Actes du 5ième Colloque de Musicologie Interdisciplinaire / Fifth Conference on Interdisciplinarity Musicology CIM09, Paris France 26-29 oct. 2009

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1. Performing Music on the Piano

Musical performance, wherein musicians can express their creativity, enlightens composers’ works. This art has
become a focal point in musicology and music psychology, as recording technologies have enabled the capture and
rigorous analysis of its acoustic trace. Expressive performance on the piano has been studied by Repp [34,35],
Parncutt [9,31] and Goebl [16–18] among others. These investigate the role and singularities of articulation, timing
and intensity in piano performance and its perception.

1.2. Defining Piano Timbre

At a high level of expertise, musical performance can manifest its singularity through timbre. However, timbre
remains quite understudied, because of its complexity and multidimensionality that make its measure and
quantification quite a reach. Even as its general approach has evolved during the last thirty years, with the
elaboration of timbre perceptual spaces [19,27,20], in the specific case of piano, it has been suggested that the
control of piano timbre, due to the mechanical constraints of the instrument, is limited to the intensity of the key
stroke, whereas in fact, the subtleties of gesture and articulation in playing a chord or a sequence of notes leave
much space for the virtuosic pianists to colour their performances with a certain timbre. As a consequence, timbre
happens to be a meaningful and well-defined parameter amongst high level performers, who have developed over
the years of practice a precise and refined motor control of the instrument, as well as an acute perceptive sensibility
to slight sonic variations. This multimodal perception of timbre results in an extensive vocabulary developed to
describe the nuances a performer can detect. However, the terms commonly used remain intuitive and directly linked
to the sensation level. During the learning process, timbre is empirically transmitted from master to student through
analogies and metaphorical verbal descriptions, especially in the form of adjectives such as bright, harsh,
shimmering, velvety, etc. Performers, all the while becoming experts at associating words to concepts of timbre,
may then not be directly aware of the gesture or means of production related to a specific timbre.

1.3. Describing Piano Timbre

Despite the many studies on timbre, most of them exploiting acoustics and psychoacoustics methods, the
idiosyncrasies of its verbalization are yet hardly explored. Von Bismarck [3] isolated, upon listening tests over 35
sounds, three main bipolar scales in timbre verbal descriptions (dull-sharp, soft-hard and round-angular). In
Cheminée’s study on free verbalization of piano sounds [8], semantic analysis revealed the specificity of the
pianists’ lexicon (as a consensual linguistic subset) built upon an affective and axiological vocabulary following two
axes: percussion and resonance. Faure & McAdams [12] compared perceptual timbre spaces to semantic profiles,
using 23 unipolar scales, corresponding each to a timbre verbal descriptor, in the aim of evaluating 12 synthesized
musical sounds. However, the resulting semantic space – built through multidimensional scaling – showed little
correlation to existing perceptual spaces. Stepanek [41] combined bottom-up and top-down approaches to derive
timbre descriptions from sound stimuli and collect free verbalizations from experts on violin and organ timbre. But
the semantic spaces created from the top-down approach could not totally describe the perceptual spaces obtained
from the bottom-up approach, as the most salient descriptors corresponding to the dimensions did not match
between semantic and perceptual spaces. Regarding the technical aspect of piano timbre expressive production
through specific gestures, Ortmann [29] linked common piano timbre verbal descriptors with characteristics of
touch, but only in relation with single notes.
In a preliminary study of piano timbre verbalization [2], upon which the present study is based, many descriptive
adjectives (close to one hundred) were collected from interviews with eight professional pianists asked to choose ten
common piano timbre descriptors, their synonyms and antonyms, and their process of technical production. In
another series of interviews, pianists were asked to define and organize the twenty most salient verbal descriptors
according to their semantic and technical similarity. Each participant provided a planar organization of verbal
descriptors from which a synthetic semantic atlas of piano timbre was built, as represented in Figure 1.

2. AIMS
The primary goal of this study is to analyze the typology of timbre description by pianists and its underlying
metaphorical and technical meaning, so as to determine whether pianists consensually agree upon these verbal
descriptions and remain consistent from piano performance to the listening experience. This is indeed essential in
assessing timbre labels upon which a quantitative analysis could focus.
 In the first stage of the study, our goal was to verify that pianists can auditorily recognize and consistently label
gesture-controlled timbre nuances using a common vocabulary. For this purpose, we have tested a group of pianists’
ability to label a series of stimuli consisting in audio recordings of piano performances, each illustrating a precisely
instructed type of timbre.

Figure 1. Semantic atlas of piano timbre from qualitative assessment of degree of synonymy [2].
Furthermore, with the computer-controlled acoustic grand piano Bösendorfer CEUS, on which the performances
were played, we were able to obtain data related to key movement and hammer velocity. The CEUS piano is indeed
equipped with high precision sensors, which makes it a perfect tool to record mechanical-level information on
performances. Another aim of this research project on piano timbre is to correlate these raw, low-level data to
instrumental gesture parameters, such as key depression profile, degree of synchronism in key attacks, degree of
overlap in consecutive notes played legato, and link them with the nature of timbre. In summary, this study
investigates timbre expression in piano performance, its gesture characteristics with regard to the articulation of
chords and sequences of notes – that is, all that lies in the relations between multiple notes, and the corresponding
verbal descriptions of timbre.

3. METHOD
The experiment was conducted in three phases. First, the stimuli were created, with recordings of piano
performances designed to put forth a specific timbre. Timbre identification of these stimuli was then tested and
validated with the performer himself, to check the coherence between the playing and listening definitions of timbre.
The third phase of the experiment consisted in a listening test in which 17 pianists were asked to identify and label
timbre presented in the stimuli.

3.1. Phase 1: Recording Sessions

The recorded excerpts were performed on the CEUS piano in the BRAMS facilities by a professional pianist (at the
time an advanced doctoral student in piano performance from University of Montreal) designated by MG in the rest
of this article. Four series of audio recordings were collected, so as to build a large enough set of stimuli for the next
phases. The fourth recording session occurred one week after the first three.
3.1.1. Instructions
For each series, MG was asked to play three short musical pieces, several times, with a different timbre each time, as
designated by a specific descriptor. These pieces, about 30 seconds long, were composed specifically for this study
with the constraint that they should fit several timbre nuances, as described by the most common and salient piano
timbre descriptors collected in [2].
 LA MUSIQUE ET SES INSTRUMENTS / MUSIC AND ITS INSTRUMENTS
Actes du 5ième Colloque de Musicologie Interdisciplinaire / Fifth Conference on Interdisciplinarity Musicology CIM09, Paris France 26-29 oct. 2009
With respect to the singularity of each piece, by the composer’s choice, and following the advice of MG during
the test, we reached the following attributions:
- First piece: bright, round, distant, harsh, dark.
- Second piece: full-bodied, round, harsh, dark.
- Third piece: shimmering, matte.
3.1.2. Data Acquisition
The timbral interpretations of the three pieces were recorded with dual stereophonic sound takes, one from in
close above the pianist’s head (AB type, with two DPA4006 omni microphones), and one further away in a more
standard fashion (quasi-coincidental NOS type, 90° and 30 cm between capsules, with two DPA4011 cardioid
microphones). The recording studio equipment and the microphones setup are displayed in Figure 2. The stimuli
were created by editing and mixing the takes together, with Digital Performer, in order to achieve as much realism
as possible, from the performer’s perspective.

Figure 2. Recording apparatus in BRAMS facilities.

It should be noted that MG could proceed to several performances within each series, corresponding to the eight
timbres, in free order and with the possibility to retry after an unsatisfactory attempt. Iteration of the same process
over 4 series allowed for comparison and selection of the optimal audio data.
In addition to these recordings, comments from the pianist were gathered, through a questionnaire-guided
interview, on each timbre verbal description and its underlying technique of production, as well as general
comments on the pieces.

3.2. Phase 2: Preliminary Identification Task

This test occurred shortly after the end of phase 1, session 4. MG was presented with the recordings of his
performances from the previous week (first three sessions), and had to try and identify, in the audio excerpts, the
timbre that characterized each. The recordings were presented through two Genelec 8050A monitoring speakers, in a
free order controlled by the experimenter to ensure that each timbre was tested and to insist on the most uncertain
answers. 21 of the 40 recordings were played. The second experimenter, also set in blind testing mode, collected
MG’s answers.

3.3. Phase 3: Piano Timbre Identification Task

Seventeen pianists were regrouped for a large listening test session. Sixteen of them were currently related to the
Faculty of Music, at University of Montreal, and eleven were Quebec natives.
Thirteen stimuli were selected among the whole set of recordings, so as to illustrate best eight of the timbres
played: bright, round, harsh, full-bodied, distant, dark, shimmering and matte. With thirteen stimuli, we could use
bright, round and shimmering twice, and harsh three times, in order to check the answers consistency and the inter-
pieces effect.
 Three successive listening sessions took place. The first one consisted in a preliminary familiarization with the
stimuli, to help the participants better apprehend the range of timbre nuances that they would have to evaluate. Then,
for the first testing process, stimuli were played, one by one, grouped by piece, and in random order unknown in
advance by the experimenter. After each stimulus presentation, the participants had to write down a free verbal
description of the timbre, as well as technical comments on the gesture that they felt could be associated with it.
Lastly, after a break, the excerpts were all presented again for a forced-choice task that consisted in choosing the
most fitting verbal descriptor among a list of the preselected timbre labels.
Written questionnaires were used to collect all answers, as well as information about the pianists’ background,
age, piano practice and so on.

3.4. Evaluation of the Semantic Proximity between Timbre Descriptors

In the perspective of performing a semantic analysis of the piano timbre identification results, we also asked the 17
participants to fill in an online form, whose interface is represented in Figure 3. The aim was to take into account the
answers semantic accuracy, and to weight the erroneous answers to account for their semantic proximity to the
expected descriptor1. This process was intended to yield some information about the semantic consistency of the
vocabulary pianists use to describe timbre.
For all the pairs of adjectives that resulted from the combinations of the eight timbre descriptors used in the
listening tests, the participants had to rate their semantic proximity on a six-step, zero to five Likert scale, whose
each step was associated with an evaluative term (from very different to very close). We considered the terms
“different” and “close” as clear enough not to induce any fortuitous bias. The answers were automatically sent by
email.

Figure 3. Online form (in French) for the evaluation of semantic proximity between timbre descriptors.

1 For instance, for a “bright” performance, “shimmering” is semantically closer than “dark” to the expected answer, and should then get more
weight.
 LA MUSIQUE ET SES INSTRUMENTS / MUSIC AND ITS INSTRUMENTS
Actes du 5ième Colloque de Musicologie Interdisciplinaire / Fifth Conference on Interdisciplinarity Musicology CIM09, Paris France 26-29 oct. 2009
4. RESULTS

4.1. Preliminary Identification Task

This task, although judged difficult and unusual, was actually performed with great ease by MG. He was able to
identify, with the right verbal descriptors, almost all the timbres presented, sometimes by elimination/default, but
mostly by direct deduction. Only the terms “full-bodied” and “round” yielded some confusion, as MG did not really
differentiate the two terms in his timbre lexicon. Therefore, the pianist’s conception of timbre was highly consistent
between performance and listening.

4.2. Main Timbre Identification Task

The seventeen participants’ answers were submitted to statistical analyses. The focus was set on the forced-choice
task of the listening test, because of its restricted corpus of timbre descriptors and the binary, right-or-wrong
assessment of the answers. The first aim was to evaluate the success rate of the participants, in relation to each
timbre. The pianists’ scores are reported in Table 1, and the timbres’ identification rate is displayed as a confusion
matrix in Table 2.

Table 1. Forced-choice timbre identification individual score: number and rate of correct answers per participant.

Table 2. Confusion matrix for the forced-choice timbre identification task: expected timbre labels (correct
answers) Vs. participants’ answers, identification rate for each timbre label performed, and adequacy of the
timbre labels as answers.
For this task, relatively to the choice of the exact term that was used as instruction to the performer, the
participants obtained between 2 and 11 right answers upon 13 – individual identification rates between 0.167 and
0.846, with a 0.164 standard deviation (Table 1). With regard to each timbre, the identification rate varies from 0 to
0.588, with a mean of 0.383 and a standard deviation of 0.2.
 We can notice from these results that the labelling ability depends heavily on the timbre presented. Indeed, the
timbre “round” was never identified (in neither of the two pieces in which it occurred), whereas such other timbres
as “harsh” (with a mean identification rate of 0.529 upon 3 recordings) and “distant” (0.588 on one recording) were
easier to label. Meanwhile, for the few timbres that were repeated upon several performances, there seems to be
some consistency (S.D. between stimuli of 0.06 and 0.16 respectively for “bright” and “harsh”), although the test
sample is much too small in this case to prove conclusive.
There is also a noticeable disparity between the participants’ success at the task, most especially for one
participant who, with 11 right answers, performed way above the others. However, trying to identify some
correlation between participants’ scores and any personal information (age, years of practice, etc.) proved
unsuccessful (correlation indexes under 0.6, which cannot be deemed significant over this small sample). The global
timbre identification rate is 0.383. While this doesn’t elicit a complete consensus on timbre verbal identification
among pianists, it is nonetheless more than three times the chance level (1/8=0.125), with a high significance
(p<<0.01) and thus indicates a similar verbal identification pattern among the participants.
As for the free description task, we compiled the synonymic and antonymic relations between descriptors elicited
in the discourse of pianists interviewed in [2]. We thus identified acknowledged synonyms and antonyms for each of
our eight target descriptors. We then analyzed our participants’ free description corpus by singling out, for each
excerpt – characterized by one target timbre descriptor – their synonyms or antonyms. Preliminary results indicate
recurring use of synonyms (or even exact expected terms) for most of the excerpts, although some excerpts
(especially from the first piece) seem more confusing and yield several antonyms.

4.3. Semantic Analysis

4.3.1. Semantic Proximity between Pairs of Descriptors
The ratings collected with the method described in paragraph 3.4, were rescaled from [0,5] to [-1,1] (-1 indicates
purely antonymic relation between two descriptors, and ratings rise with a growing degree of synonymy, till identity
at +1). For instance, the timbre descriptors “bright” and “shimmering” have a 0.7 semantic proximity rating, which
means they are close in meaning. On the other hand, the -1 rating between “bright” and “dark” mean they are
antonyms with regard to timbre description. The complete ratings are displayed in Table 3. Its last line indicates, for
each target descriptor, its mean semantic rating, which actually corresponds to chance level: for instance a “bright”
target timbre, if described randomly, will yield a -0.169 identification score.

Table 3. Semantic proximity ratings between timbre descriptors.

We then used the Multidimensional Scaling technique to build a semantic space illustrating the relations between
piano timbre descriptors. Dissimilarity matrices were implemented from each pianist’s evaluation of semantic
proximity between pairs of descriptors, then converted in distance matrices and fed to the INDSCAL model. The
optimal dimensionality, with a minimal redundancy between dimensions, and a full disclosure and conservation of
the data information, was obtained with a three-dimensional space, whose planar projections are represented in
Figure 4.
4.3.2. Semantic Accuracy
Those semantic proximity ratings between descriptors were then used as a weighting system for the forced-choice
timbre identification results. Each incorrect answer was thus attributed the value corresponding to its semantic
proximity with the target timbre descriptor. With this weighting, the random score (chance level), as defined by the
mean over the 13 excerpts of the mean of each descriptor’s weight in relation to each excerpt’s timbre, was re-
evaluated at -0.14. The semantically weighted timbre identification results – i.e. the timbre identification confusion
matrix (Table 2) times the semantic proximity symmetric matrix (Table 3) – are displayed as a confusion matrix in
Table 4.
 LA MUSIQUE ET SES INSTRUMENTS / MUSIC AND ITS INSTRUMENTS
Actes du 5ième Colloque de Musicologie Interdisciplinaire / Fifth Conference on Interdisciplinarity Musicology CIM09, Paris France 26-29 oct. 2009

Figure 4. MDS 3D semantic space – its three plane projections.

Table 4. Semantic accuracy of piano timbre identification:

[timbre identification confusion matrix] x [semantic proximity matrix].
The global semantic accuracy over 13 excerpts is now of 0.39, mostly comparable as a numeric value to the 0.383
obtained without weighting, but nonetheless much more significant this time, as the range shifted from [0,1] to
[-1,1], as chance level is set much lower, and with p<<0.001. Therefore, these results credit the semantic accuracy of
the participants’ answers. While this is not sufficient to indicate a global consensus upon piano timbre description,
the results still outline a certain common ground among the participants about the semantic meaning to attach to
piano timbre upon listening.

5. GESTURE ANALYSIS
The other side of this project sets its sight on analyzing the pianistic gesture in its relation to timbre. More precisely,
the aim is to investigate the way expert pianists subtly adapt the gesture patterns they adopt on keyboard and pedals
to produce distinct timbre nuances. At the keyboard level, gesture analysis is hereby restricted to its expression as
strictly transferred to the keys’ movements. This eludes the many complex patterns of hand, arm and body
movements pianists employ in an idiosyncratic fashion, while expressing an emotion or character in a performance.
By focusing on gesture as seen through the direct actions on the keyboard, we seek to identify articulation, dynamics
and synchronism features that are systematically required to obtain a precise timbre nuance, regardless of a
performer’s idiosyncratic ancillary gestures.
5.1. Method
5.1.1. Data acquisition
For this study, the apparatus that enabled gestural data acquisition is the computer-controlled grand piano
Bösendorfer CEUS at the BRAMS2 facilities. This invaluable research tool is indeed equipped with high precision
optical sensors3 on keys4, pedals and hammers.
In the recording sessions described in section 3.1 and played on the CEUS piano, each performance’s key and
pedal positions, as well as local maximum hammer velocities, were collected. This way, we could gather a large
dataset of low-level gestural control parameter values, marked with the timbre the pianist aimed at producing in each
performance. This dataset was given out as ASCII-encoded files, listing for each timestamp the active
keys/pedals/hammers number5 and the corresponding value.
5.1.2. Data analysis
In order to proceed to exhaustive analyses of this dataset, several MATLAB routines were implemented. Each data
file was first reorganized as a time-by-key matrix, in which each line corresponds to a key/pedal number and
contains the successive time/value pairs for each active state. This can be displayed as a piano roll (cf. Figure 5).
Then, for each key, the consecutive non-zero occurrences which would correspond to a same note were regrouped in
an “event”. For each of those events, several control parameters were calculated, within each event – key depression
duration and skewness, pedal use, hammer delay on key-depression – and in relation to the other keys (overall or
within an octave) – overlap duration, overlap rate with regard to key-depressions, number of overlapping keys, inter-
onset intervals. Means and standard deviations of those events parameter values were calculated, for each key, each
file and each timbre. Those statistics are displayed in Figure 6, for first-glance comparison purposes.

Figure 5. Pianoroll display of key positions, pedals and maximum hammer velocities (vertical arrows under key
depressions) over time. A few essential parameters are highlighted in the zoomed-in window.

2 International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research – http://www.brams.org/

3 500 Hz sample rate and 250 measure steps.
4 By way of the key depression angle, as measured over its roughly 2° range [1] – which translates to an 8mm key-end motion.
5 Key numbers from 1 to 97, pedals from 109 to 111, and hammer numbers given by (Key# + 128).
 LA MUSIQUE ET SES INSTRUMENTS / MUSIC AND ITS INSTRUMENTS
Actes du 5ième Colloque de Musicologie Interdisciplinaire / Fifth Conference on Interdisciplinarity Musicology CIM09, Paris France 26-29 oct. 2009

Figure 6. Comparison of 5 parameters values (columns) between 4 timbres (color bars – each the mean of several
performances) over 11 selected keys (rows) and in all (lowest row). Some parameters stand out for one timbre
(such as the heavy use of the soft pedal for a distant timbre).
The mean parameter values of each performance – over time and keys – were compiled as deviation rates from
the means over the whole piece, to discard each of the three pieces inherent discrepancies. As a first step in
exploring the correlations between timbre and the compiled features, one-way ANOVAs with timbre as factor were
performed.
Two analysis methods were processed. We first carried out a one-way ANOVA over the whole deviation-rate
dataset, and selected the features showing significant correlations (at a 5% threshold). Then, we used one-way
ANOVAs over each pair of timbres, with each dataset consisting in solely the files relative to timbre X and timbre
Y. The significantly discriminative features within each timbre pair were listed, and for each timbre the most pair-
wise distinctive features, that enabled to differentiate this timbre from all the others, were selected.
5.1.3. Results
The global analysis revealed significant correlations between timbre and the following control features: use of
sustain and soft pedals, hammer delay on key depression6, added overlap durations7, number of overlapping keys
within an octave, and mean key depression8. A timbre profile was then built, based on these overall timbre-
distinctive gestural features (cf. Table 5).
The timbre pair-wise analysis yielded several features whose value (reduced to high or low) could characterize
one timbre. Most of those features were already identified through the global analysis, but a few more were found:
note skewness9, delay of maximum key depression on its start, inter-onset intervals (and their variance), overlap rate
as weighted by relative key depression, and overlap within an octave. All these distinctive features, by timbre, are
summed up in Table 6.

6
Either from the start of key depression or on the maximum key depression instant; those two values being highly correlated, only the former is
presented in Table 5.
7
With respect to a target key, this is the sum of all other key overlap durations in a given event.
8
Over the total piece length as well as over the notes duration.
9
Key depression skewness in time along the duration of one note.
Table 5. Timbre profile upon the seven main timbre-discriminative gestural control features. The respective
deviation rates from the means over the whole pieces are presented for each timbre and feature, with a color code
(the darker, the higher value). ANOVA F- and p-values are indicated for each feature.

Table 6. Timbre profiles based on timbre pair-wise gesture analysis. For each timbre, its most discriminative
gestural control features are presented, as either typically high or low values.
No significant correlation was found between the features and intensity (as given by the maximum hammer
velocity) or tempo. This means the 13 identified timbre-distinctive features are not mere artefacts of tempo and
intensity, and can thus be considered as cues of the performer’s expressivity at the timbre level. Correlations
between all features were also checked for physically meaningful redundancies. Significant correlations were
predictably identified between somewhat similar features, such as the hammer delay on maximum key depression
and the hammer delay on the start of key depression or, among the 13 timbre-distinctive features, between the mean
key depressions upon either the piece length or the notes durations. Those last two features then ought to be merged.
Other significant correlations were only found in features that could not possibly be physically associated, such as
the hammer delay and the soft pedal. Those correlations can only result from their simultaneous use for expressive
intents, and there would be no point in either merging or discarding them.
These preliminary results suggest that one can identify patterns of gestural control features that specifically relate
to a given timbre. For instance, the global analysis indicates it is possible to distinguish between round and full-
bodied timbres by looking at the rate at which the soft pedal is used. Each of the eight examined timbres presents a
unique set of gestural control features – even when reduced to a simple high/low value – either upon the seven
general, essential features or upon the most discriminative feature set for one timbre – e.g. a combination of long,
multi-key overlaps, limited use of the sustain pedal and a short hammer delay is characteristic of a harsh timbre.
Within the limits of this study, and with regard to solely mid-level, mechanical parameters (relative to the direct
actions on the keyboard and pedals), we could thus obtain the gestural mapping of piano timbre, specific to the
pianist who performed the analyzed excerpts.
 LA MUSIQUE ET SES INSTRUMENTS / MUSIC AND ITS INSTRUMENTS
Actes du 5ième Colloque de Musicologie Interdisciplinaire / Fifth Conference on Interdisciplinarity Musicology CIM09, Paris France 26-29 oct. 2009
6. DISCUSSION

6.1. Gestural Control of Piano Timbre

The methods and analysis tools we developed yielded interesting results, but the study must be extended to include
more pieces and more performers. Indeed, the performances sample size is too small, as only a few excerpts featured
each timbre. The musical discrepancies between the three pieces used in this present study may have affected the
cross-piece comparisons between timbres in a way that has not been accounted for. Besides, the gestural control
parameters hereby analyzed are yet too coarse, and still removed from a pianist’s understanding of his own gesture.
We intend to extract higher-level parameters, more detailed and meaningful to the pianists. To this aim, we will
focus on in-depth musical analysis of local parameters, instead of a global analysis on the whole excerpt. We will
extract musically significant elements, such as chords and melodic lines, and examine their inner features of
synchronism, relative intensity, overlap between their notes. We will also elicit musical features in relation to the
score (e.g. phrasing). This ought to give us more precise and meaningful conclusions on the gestural control of piano
timbre.

6.2. Piano Timbre Perception and Verbal Description

Pianists’ ability to identify timbre in the context of various timbral interpretations of a piece can already be deemed
as convincing, as the performer himself could easily retrieve the timbres he played and as the participants to the
listening tests performed way above chance. However, to improve the significance of the piano timbre identification
test, we need to refine the selection of timbres. Indeed, we focused here on the most commonly used timbre
descriptors, as set alight in [2]. Yet this method could not be trusted upon to encompass the whole timbre space that
can be reached with the piano. We believe the identification results may become much more salient if we focus on
selecting the most diverse and encompassing timbre descriptors among those of common use. We shall identify
them by proceeding to a large-scale semantic proximity evaluation test, following the same procedure as detailed in
paragraph 3.4, and by distinguishing the optimal descriptors within the resulting MDS semantic space. Its
dimensions will be defined semantically and acoustically.
Furthermore, to ensure the excerpts are only evaluated upon their timbre characteristics, we will test the effect of
tempo and intensity, by comparing timbre perception in normalized excerpts and in unedited stimuli.
Eventually, the experimental protocol shall be optimized, essentially by using shorter pieces to ensure timbre
consistency throughout. And several pianists will be asked to perform the pieces, in order to enable us to set apart
the individual expressive idiosyncrasies from the shared features that hail from timbre expression.

6.3. Perspectives
With this study, we wish to get a better knowledge of pianists’ expressivity at the timbre level, and especially of the
relations between words, gesture and sound in piano timbre expression. Such findings may yield the development of
new didactic methods, wherein indications of the precise gesture required to produce the adequate timbre nuance
would complement the abstract and metaphoric expressions that are traditionally employed. Furthermore, gesture as
well as verbalization results could be applied in virtual piano software, as a modeling parameter for the playing
style/timbre color. Finally, in a comparative perspective, it could be worthwhile to record and test pianists from
other cultures, traditions and geographical locations.

7. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We wish to thank all the participants to this study, and also all our collaborators: Madeleine Bellemare for her
interviews of pianists about piano timbre and her involvement in the project, Sylvie-Anne Ménard for composing the
three short pieces, Prof. Douglas Eck for his feedback and help with the use of the Bösendorfer CEUS piano,
Mathieu Gaudet for his piano expertise, and Dominic Thibault, sound technician, for his taking care of the recording
process and of all things regarding the piano.

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