Real-time visualisation of fugue played by a string quartet
This provides an engaging tool for audiences to better comprehend complex music, but it is incremental as it applies existing audio-to-score alignment to a specific domain.
The authors developed a real-time visualization system for a string quartet's fugue performance, using pitch curves aligned with thematic classification and tonality to enhance music understanding, and demonstrated it at a concert featuring Bach's The Art of Fugue.
We present a new system for real-time visualisation of music performance, focused for the moment on a fugue played by a string quartet. The basic principle is to offer a visual guide to better understand music using strategies that should be as engaging, accessible and effective as possible. The pitch curves related to the separate voices are drawn on a space whose temporal axis is normalised with respect to metrical positions, and aligned vertically with respect to their thematic and motivic classification. Aspects related to tonality are represented as well. We describe the underlying technologies we have developed and the technical setting. In particular, the rhythmical and structural representation of the piece relies on real-time polyphonic audio-to-score alignment using online dynamic time warping. The visualisation will be presented at a concert of the Danish String Quartet, performing the last piece of The Art of Fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach.