Kirak Kim

Joonhyung Bae, Kirak Kim, Hyeyoon Cho et al.

Synthesizing realistic piano hand motions requires both precision and naturalness. Physics-based methods achieve precision but produce stiff motions; data-driven models learn natural dynamics but struggle with positional accuracy. Piano motion exhibits a natural hierarchy: fingertip positions are nearly deterministic given piano geometry and fingering, while wrist and intermediate joints offer stylistic freedom. We present [OURS], a four-stage framework exploiting this hierarchy: (1) statistics-based fingertip positioning, (2) FiLM-conditioned trajectory refinement, (3) wrist estimation, and (4) STGCN-based pose synthesis. We contribute expert-annotated fingerings for the FürElise dataset (153 pieces, ~10 hours). Experiments demonstrate F1 = 0.910, substantially outperforming diffusion baselines (F1 = 0.121), with user study (N=41) confirming quality approaching motion capture. Expert evaluation by professional pianists (N=5) identified anticipatory motion as the key remaining gap, providing concrete directions for future improvement.

Joonhyung Bae, Kirak Kim, Hyeyoon Cho et al.

Piano fingering shapes how a passage can be played, yet it is difficult to label after a performance. An annotator must decide which finger produced each note while reconciling the score, timing, video, and hand motion. We present PiAnnotate, a web-based pipeline for adding expert fingering annotations to the FurElise performance dataset. The tool brings together a piano-roll view, performance video, and a 3D MANO hand mesh so that reviewers can inspect each assignment in musical and physical context. Rather than storing only the final answer, PiAnnotate keeps paired rule-based and human-edited fingering tracks. These paired tracks make the annotation history auditable by showing where a geometric rule was sufficient, where experts intervened, and how labels changed across review passes. As a final diagnostic, we train a small Transformer probe on the paired tracks. The probe improves on the rule baseline on held-out pieces while remaining conservative about changing labels that were already correct, suggesting that the edited labels contain learnable structure rather than only isolated fixes.

Yonghyun Kim, Junhyung Park, Joonhyung Bae et al.

The multimodal nature of music performance has driven increasing interest in data beyond the audio domain within the music information retrieval (MIR) community. This paper introduces PianoVAM, a comprehensive piano performance dataset that includes videos, audio, MIDI, hand landmarks, fingering labels, and rich metadata. The dataset was recorded using a Disklavier piano, capturing audio and MIDI from amateur pianists during their daily practice sessions, alongside synchronized top-view videos in realistic and varied performance conditions. Hand landmarks and fingering labels were extracted using a pretrained hand pose estimation model and a semi-automated fingering annotation algorithm. We discuss the challenges encountered during data collection and the alignment process across different modalities. Additionally, we describe our fingering annotation method based on hand landmarks extracted from videos. Finally, we present benchmarking results for both audio-only and audio-visual piano transcription using the PianoVAM dataset and discuss additional potential applications.

Junhyung Park, Yonghyun Kim, Joonhyung Bae et al.

Piano performance is a multimodal activity that intrinsically combines physical actions with the acoustic rendition. Despite growing research interest in analyzing the multimodal nature of piano performance, the laborious process of acquiring large-scale multimodal data remains a significant bottleneck, hindering further progress in this field. To overcome this barrier, we present an integrated web toolkit comprising two graphical user interfaces (GUIs): (i) PiaRec, which supports the synchronized acquisition of audio, video, MIDI, and performance metadata. (ii) ASDF, which enables the efficient annotation of performer fingering from the visual data. Collectively, this system can streamline the acquisition of multimodal piano performance datasets.