Expressive Means. Vamp Plugins for Sonic Visualiser

"Expressive Means" is a set of Vamp plugins designed for the automated analysis of timing, articulation, pitch vibrato, and portamento in monophonic recordings of musical performances within the open-source, multi-platform audio visualisation software Sonic Visualiser. Based on historical thresholds, it identifies and classifies types and relative modulation intensities of such instances – with a primary focus on bowed stringed instruments, but also potentially useful for other instruments and singing. The plugins provide both semantic and "advanced" user interfaces: the former offer a quick start with default parameter settings based on sample tests; the latter allow for manual parameter adjustments, making the plugins adaptive for various recording qualities and future findings on expressive means in musical performances.

"Expressive Means" makes use of Matthias Mauch’s "pYIN" code and of Tilo Hähnel’s "vibratoanalyse.R" logic. It is open-source and distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), funded by the Stutt- gart University of Music and the Performing Arts (Germany). It may be redistributed and / or modified under the terms of the GPL (v2.0 or later). Also see the software's homepage at Github https://github.com/cannam/expressive-means/releases and a video tutorial available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkF1VzNEKgw

Please mind that "Expressive Means" only works with monophonic audio recordings in a meaningful way (i.e., the voice of interest being the only or at least the 'loudest’ part within the signal).