Automatic Music Performance Analysis and Comparison Toolkit (AMPACT)

FAIN: HD-228966-15

Ohio State University (Columbus, OH 43210-1349)
Johanna Catriona Devaney (Project Director: September 2014 to March 2025)

The further development of a suite of analytical tools for music scholarship, with a particular focus on the development of a tool for analyzing polyphonic performances from musical scores.

This project proposes to develop a core technology for a suite of automatic software tools for quantitatively analyzing musical performances for which a corresponding musical score is available and an encoding format for storing the analyses, entitled the Automatic Music Performance and Comparison Toolkit (AMPACT). A musical performance can convey both the musicians' interpretation of the written score as well as emphasize, or even manipulate, the emotional content of the music through small variations in timing, dynamics, and tuning. The target audience for AMPACT is music scholars are who are interested in performing empirical analyses of recorded performances but who lack the technical skills or the time necessary to develop their own tools or implement existing algorithms. The proposed project will allow the researchers to develop an algorithm for analyzing polyphonic performances for which musical scores are available.