International Audio Laboratories Erlangen

A Swingogram Representation for Tracking Microrhythmic Variations in Jazz Performances

This is the accompanying website for the following paper:

1. Christian Dittmar, Martin Pfleiderer, Stefan Balke, and Meinard Müller
   A Swingogram Representation for Tracking Micro-Rhythmic Variation in Jazz Performances
   Journal of New Music Research, 47(2): 97–113, 2017. Bibtex Demo DOI

   @article{DittmarPBM17_SwingRatio_JNMR,
   author = {Christian Dittmar and Martin Pfleiderer and Stefan Balke and Meinard M{\"u}ller},
   title = {A Swingogram Representation for Tracking Micro-Rhythmic Variation in Jazz Performances},
   journal = {Journal of New Music Research},
   volume = {47},
   number = {2},
   pages = {97--113},
   year = {2017},
   doi = {10.1080/09298215.2017.1367405},
   url-demo={https://www.audiolabs-erlangen.de/resources/MIR/2017-JNMR-SwingRatio},
   }

Abstract

According to musicological studies, a typical microrhythmic trait of jazz performances is the "swing". In this paper, we focus on analyzing the swing ratio (beat-upbeat ratio) implied by the drummer on the ride cymbal. Extending previous work, we propose a new method for semi-automatic swing ratio estimation based on pattern recognition in onset sequences. As a main contribution, we introduce a novel time-swing ratio representation called swingogram, which locally captures information related to the swing ratio over time. Based on this representation, we propose to track the most plausible trajectory of the swing ratio of the ride cymbal pattern over time via dynamic programming. As we show, this kind of visualization may lead to interesting insights into the peculiarities of jazz musicians improvising together.

Swingogram Examples from the Weimar Jazz Database

Under the following links, we show interesting examples of jazz excerpts from the Weimar Jazz Database (WJD), where we can spot intricate microrhythmic variations throughout the solo. Our swingogram visualization and a piano-roll representation of the solo is synced with the corresponding part of a Youtube video. The Youtube video player will automatically start playing, you can use the normal video player controls to navigate inside the excerpt.

[The Red Door - Mel Lewis (Drums) & Gerry Mulligan (Baritone Sax)]
[Down Under - Art Blakey (Drums) & Freddie Hubbard (Trumpet)]
[Blue Train - Philly Joe Jones (Drums) & Curtis Fuller (Trombone)]

Illustrative Example of the Swingogram

In the audio player below, we show three different representations of a synthetic music signal that contains 100 repetitions of a prototype ride cymbal pattern. With each measure, we steadily increase the tempo, yielding a tempo sweep between 146 BPM and 328 BPM. We fix the swing ratio in each measure to the tied-triplet feel of 2.0. In the top row, we show a Fourier-based tempogram as described in [2]. In the middle row, we show a sequence of log-lag ACF features as described in [3]. Finally, in the bottom row we show our proposed swingogram representation that extends our pattern matching technique from [1].

Processed items from the WJD

In the following, we list all the excerpts that we used for the large-scale statistical model about the relationship between tempo and swing ratio.

References

1. Christian Dittmar, Martin Pfleiderer, and Meinard Müller
   Automated Estimation of Ride Cymbal Swing Ratios in Jazz Recordings
   In Proceedings of the International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR): 271–277, 2015. Bibtex PDF

   @inproceedings{DittmarPM15_Swing_ISMIR,
   author    = {Christian Dittmar and Martin Pfleiderer and Meinard M{\"u}ller},
   title     = {Automated Estimation of Ride Cymbal Swing Ratios in Jazz Recordings},
   booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on Music Information Retrieval ({ISMIR})},
   address   = {M\'{a}laga, Spain},
   year      = {2015},
   pages     = {271--277},
   url-pdf   = {http://ismir2015.uma.es/articles/143_Paper.pdf}
   }

2. Peter Grosche and Meinard Müller
   Extracting Predominant Local Pulse Information from Music Recordings
   IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, 19(6): 1688–1701, 2011. Bibtex Details DOI

   @article{GroscheM11_PLP_TASLP,
   author    = {Peter Grosche and Meinard M{\"u}ller},
   journal   = {IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing},
   title     = {Extracting Predominant Local Pulse Information from Music Recordings},
   number    = {6},
   publisher = {IEEE},
   volume    = {19},
   year      = {2011},
   pages     = {1688--1701},
   doi      = {10.1109/TASL.2010.2096216},
   url-details = {https://www.audiolabs-erlangen.de/resources/MIR/tempogramtoolbox}
   }

3. Matthias Gruhne and Christian Dittmar
   Improving Rhythmic Pattern Features Based on Logarithmic Preprocessing
   In Proceedings of the Audio Engineering Society (AES) Convention, 2009. Bibtex PDF

   @inproceedings{GruhneD09_LogLagACF_AES,
   author = {Matthias Gruhne and Christian Dittmar},
   title = {Improving Rhythmic Pattern Features Based on Logarithmic Preprocessing},
   booktitle = {Proceedings of the Audio Engineering Society ({AES}) Convention},
   address = {Munich, Germany},
   year = {2009},
   url-pdf = {http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=15013},
   }

4. Fernando Benadon
   Slicing the beat: Jazz eighth-notes as expressive microrhythm
   Ethnomusicology: 73–98, 2006. Bibtex PDF

   @article{Benadon06_SwingRatio_EM,
   title     = {Slicing the beat: Jazz eighth-notes as expressive microrhythm},
   author    = {Fernando Benadon},
   journal   = {Ethnomusicology},
   pages     = {73--98},
   year      = {2006},
   publisher = {JSTOR},
   url-pdf   = {https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20174424.pdf},
   }

5. Anders Friberg and Andreas Sundström
   Swing Ratios and Ensemble Timing in Jazz Performance: Evidence for a common Rhythmic Pattern
   Music Perception, 19(3): 333–349, 2002. Bibtex PDF

   @article{FribergS02_SwingRatio_MP,
   title     = {Swing Ratios and Ensemble Timing in Jazz Performance: Evidence for a common Rhythmic Pattern},
   author    = {Anders Friberg and Andreas Sundstr{\"o}m},
   journal   = {Music Perception},
   volume    = {19},
   number    = {3},
   pages     = {333--349},
   year      = {2002},
   publisher = {JSTOR}
   url-pdf   = {https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1525/mp.2002.19.3.333.pdf},
   }