Performance Manager and Executor

The main functionalities is:

During EXECUTION the page turning is automatic in the sense that musicians do not have to worry about it; the system provides the right page at the correct time.

The rate of music execution is initially set on the basis of the metronomic indication in terms of beats per minute. This ideal trend can be adjusted in real time by increasing/decreasing the execution rate by a given percentage. The adjustment can be easily made by comparing the position of the line marking the ideal execution instant on the score (the central line of the triple vertical lines) with the sound produced by the orchestra. This implies that the person devoted to this work has to be capable of reading music and following the score on the basis of the sound. For musicians, this is a trivial task. The archivist typically follows the music on the score during rehearsals and performances as a sort of quality control on musicians and on the scores prepared.

A different approach can be based on following the conductor's movements with a video camera, but it is more critical since the conductor does not mark each beat with a gesture. For example, when a special interpretation is required from a certain part of the orchestra, the conductor uses the hands to depict the desired effect, disregarding the general movements.

The automatic page turning presents several advantages, including: (i) the musicians and the conductor do not lose their concentration because of page turning, (ii) the avoidance of noise produced by turning pages, and (iii) the reduction of discontinuities in the sound caused by turning the page. The latter is presently reduced by trying to ensure that rests occur in the last measure of the page. This solution is obviously not always feasible, and it depends on the part and on the music. This is the reason why several pianists have someone to turn pages for them, and why, when two musicians read music from the same lectern, the one on the left has to turn the pages while the other continues to play.


 
 
Synchronisation

During synchronization an ETT table is generated to store the effective time duration of singles measures that are produced by the corrections of user in order to maintain aligned audio and video execution.
 

Reproduction

During the reproduction, system uses the information of the ETT file to maintain audio and video aligned, so using acceleration and deceleration key it’s possible to modify the execution rate. To make this it’s necessary to realise a feedback mechanism between audio execution and scrolling on video and in this sense the audio fragment number plays an important role.

In fact this value allows linking the two processes each other as shown in the figure. During execution, the position of the current fragment is requested measure by measure and compared with the value stored for the current measure. If there is a big difference between values, system makes the necessary corrections adjusting the scrolling velocity for video execution.

Moreover this method can be used to realise some useful function as "jump to measure", start from measure.