Bowed musical instruments have been the subject of scientific investigations for centuries. Yet, the physical phenomena that are behind their timbral quality are still far from being fully understood. This is one of the reasons why the art of violin making is still so strongly tied to tradition. This manuscript describes early results in a study of the relations that exist between timbral and acoustic characteristics of such instruments and their high-level descriptors. In particular, we propose a suitable ontology for a timbral characterization of violins, where every resource is connected and provided with formally defined semantics. Semantic web technologies have taught us how ontologies can become a powerful tool for gathering and managing knowledge in specific areas of interest, where resources are connected and described with formally defined semantics. This, in fact, represents a crucial step for building applications that reason over Web data. In this paper we present an ontology for knowledge representation of violins, as part of a wider ontology of bowed instruments. With this ontology we capture timbral and acoustic aspects of violins as well as violin making and properties of the materials used for their production. We collected and organized semantic descriptors used by numerous violin makers (from natural language) to describe sound proprieties of musical instruments. We also developed an initial model of the relation between semantic descriptors and low-level audio features. The ontology that we present in this study formalizes the semantics of the high-level descriptors and investigates the relation with low- level features. The terminology has been collected through a series of interviews with violin makers in the city of Cremona (Italy), world heritage site for the practice of violin makers. Through listening tests and a feature extraction we study the correlation between high-level descriptors and objective properties of sound.

The Violin Ontology

ZANONI, MASSIMILIANO;SETRAGNO, FRANCESCO;SARTI, AUGUSTO
2014-01-01

Abstract

Bowed musical instruments have been the subject of scientific investigations for centuries. Yet, the physical phenomena that are behind their timbral quality are still far from being fully understood. This is one of the reasons why the art of violin making is still so strongly tied to tradition. This manuscript describes early results in a study of the relations that exist between timbral and acoustic characteristics of such instruments and their high-level descriptors. In particular, we propose a suitable ontology for a timbral characterization of violins, where every resource is connected and provided with formally defined semantics. Semantic web technologies have taught us how ontologies can become a powerful tool for gathering and managing knowledge in specific areas of interest, where resources are connected and described with formally defined semantics. This, in fact, represents a crucial step for building applications that reason over Web data. In this paper we present an ontology for knowledge representation of violins, as part of a wider ontology of bowed instruments. With this ontology we capture timbral and acoustic aspects of violins as well as violin making and properties of the materials used for their production. We collected and organized semantic descriptors used by numerous violin makers (from natural language) to describe sound proprieties of musical instruments. We also developed an initial model of the relation between semantic descriptors and low-level audio features. The ontology that we present in this study formalizes the semantics of the high-level descriptors and investigates the relation with low- level features. The terminology has been collected through a series of interviews with violin makers in the city of Cremona (Italy), world heritage site for the practice of violin makers. Through listening tests and a feature extraction we study the correlation between high-level descriptors and objective properties of sound.
2014
Proceedings of the 9th Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology – CIM14
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11311/964723
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