Real-time visual feedback of emotional expression in singing

Sammanfattning: The thesis project concerns the development and evaluation of a real-time music visualization system aimed at creating a multi-modal perceptual experience of music emotions. The purpose of the project is to provide singers with real-time visual feedback on their singing, to enhance their expression of emotions in the music. Built upon results from previous studies on emotional expression in music, crossmodal correspondences, and associations among sound, shape, color, and emotions, a singing voice visualization system is proposed that generates real-time graphics to reflect the emotional expression in the input singing in an intuitive fashion. A mapping between musical and visual features was established and tested within a user study regarding the setting of its polarities. The singing voice visualization system was developed as as a software system that runs on personal computers, utilizing Pure Data and Unity. This implementation allows for instantaneous feedback to the user during their singing. The mapping was evaluated in a user study, where participants engage in expressive singing to test the system,in order to assess the meaningfulness of the visual feedback and the effectiveness of the mapping, as well as the impact of the polarity. The results show that color as a strong visual cue of emotional expression provided meaningful information on some participants’ expression of typical happiness and sadness. Other cues of the visual feedback possibly enhanced some participants’ emotional expression of singing in an indirect way. The polarity had a noticeable impact on the perception of the visual feedback. The current study is limited by the reliability of the techniques used for the extracting acoustic features from real-time singing, particularly in the detection of attack speed. The evaluation were limited by the broad definition of one of the research questions. The findings of this study suggest potential applications for the singing voice visualization system in fields of music education, art, and entertainment. Additionally, the research highlights the need for further exploration and refinement in the design of the mapping and the evaluation methodology.