The following sound examples are the musical materials used in the first of two recent experiments on the aesthetic quality of an "average" performance (Repp, 1996, submitted). The materials of Experiment 1, because of their length, are provided as MIDI files only, except for the average performance which is also provided as a sound file. The materials of Experiment 2 are provided both as sound files and as MIDI files. The sound files have been downsampled to conserve computer memory, so there is a slight loss of fidelity. (Sound files are in AIFF format and most are approximately 250K in size.) Playback of the MIDI files naturally will result in an instrumental timbre different from the digital piano sound used in the original experiments.

Experiment 1 used 10 performances by piano graduate students of Robert Schumann's "Träumerei" (op. 15, No. 7) and an additional performance created by averaging the 10 student performances. The experimental stimuli preserve the expressive timing and dynamics of the original performances, but they have been regularized in other respects (onset asynchronies have been removed, pedaling has been standardized, all inaccuracies have been corrected) and have been reproduced on a different instrument (Roland RD-250s digital piano) rather than the original Yamaha Disklavier.

Experiment 2 used the beginning of Chopin's Etude in E major (op. 10, No.3) in performances by 9 graduate student pianists (on the digital piano) and 15 famous pianists (on commercial recordings). Only the original timing patterns are preserved in the experimental stimuli; expressive dynamics and other performance aspects have been held constant. Separate and combined averages were formed, and three performances representing the first three (Varimax-rotated) components of a principal components analysis on the 15 expert performances were also included. All performances have been synthesized on the Roland RD-250s digital piano.

I would be interested in your thoughts and comments on these experiments. To send me an e-mail message, click below:

Send a message to Bruno (repp@haskins.yale.edu)

References

Repp, B. H. (1996). The aesthetic quality of a quantitatively average music performance. In B. Pennycook & E. Costa-Giomi (eds.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (pp. 7-12). Montréal: McGill University.

Repp, B. H. (in press). The aesthetic quality of a quantitatively average music performance: Two preliminary experiments. Music Perception.