Analysis of Piano Playing Movements Spanning Multiple Touches

Awareness of playing movements can help a piano student to improve technique. We are developing a piano pedagogy application that uses sensor data of hand and arm movement and generates feedback to increase movement awareness. This paper reports on a method for analysis of piano playing movements. The method allows to judge whether an active movement in a joint has occurred during a given time interval. This time interval may include one or more touches. The problem is complicated by the fact that the mechanical interaction between the arm and piano action generates additional movements that are not under direct control of the player. The analysis method is able to ignore these movements and can therefore be used to provide useful feedback.