Caroline Traube (Université de Montréal) [PI] with Jason Noble (Université de Montréal), and Louis Goldford (Columbia University), Gabriel Couturier (Université de Montréal), Juanita Marchand Knight (Concordia University), and Theodora Nestorova (McGill University).
Description:
Evoking the human voice through instrumental music has been a perennial goal for composers, appearing in traditional performance instructions such as cantabile and contemporary practices such as formant modeling (e.g., Jonathan Harvey, Speakings, 2008; Peter Ablinger, Deus Cantando, 2009). Performers also make extensive use of vocal metaphors in their discourse (Kristine Healey, “Imagined Vocalities,” 2018). But do general listeners perceive instrumental music in terms of vocal qualities or metaphors? We addressed this question by asking listeners to rate their perceptions of vocality in music intended to emulate it, followed by a proof-of-concept composition and performance.
In one block of our experiment, listeners provided real-time continuous slider data indicating how “voice-like” they perceive repertoire excerpts to be. These excerpts included contemporary vocal mimesis techniques (e.g., spectral transcription, concatenative synthesis, source-filter, vibrato modeling), traditional approaches to vocality (e.g., arioso, recitativo), and control stimuli that were materially similar but not explicitly intended to evoke the voice. In the other block, participants provided singular slider values for short musical stimuli synthetically modeled on the voice and based on similar mimesis and voice synthesis techniques, including digital maquettes comprised of superimposed instrumental samples variously modeling acoustic orchestrations of the voice. To the best of our knowledge, this study was the first of its kind, finally providing perceptual validation for a phenomenon that has been important to musicians for centuries. We have published our results in a TOR module and submitted it to journals and conferences.
Knowledge gained in this study—about which compositional techniques are most effective at invoking vocality—have then been applied creatively by Louis Goldford in a new composition for ensemble and electronics, in collaboration with the Longleash trio in New York City, where the piece will be premiered.