Expressive Director: a System for the Real-time Control of Music Performance Synthesis

The Expressive Director is a system allowing real-time control of music performance synthesis, in particular regarding expressive and emotional aspects. It allows a user to interact in real time, for example, changing the emotional intent from happy to sad or from a romantic expressive style to a neutral while it is playing. The Expressive Director was designed in order to merge the expressiveness model developed at CSC and at KTH. The control of the synthesis can be obtained using a two-dimensional space (called “Control Space”) in which the mouse pointer can be moved by the user from an expressive intention to another continuously. Depending on the position, the system applies suitable expressive deviations profiles. The Control Space can be made so as to represent the Valence-Arousal space from music psychology research.