A Music Exploration Interface Based on Vocal Timbre and Pitch in Popular Music

Tomoyasu Nakano, Momoka Sasaki, Mayuko Kishi, Masahiro Hamasaki, Masataka Goto, Yoshinori Hijikata

Abstract: This paper proposes an interface that enables users to conduct music explorations focusing on two aspects of singing voices, vocal timbre and pitch, that are useful in finding singing voices that match users’ preferences. The interface includes a two-dimensional map to visualize the songs being explored. The map plots songs according to timbre or pitch similarities of their singing voices. Since similar songs are located nearby each other on the map, users can visually find singing voices similar to their favorite singing voices. In addition to locating songs on the map, the interface colors each song in order to visualize additional aspects related to characteristics of singing voices, such as acoustic features or words describing singing voices (e.g., “Clear”). Prior to developing the interface, we conducted a questionnaire survey with twenty participants and confirmed that both vocal timbre and pitch are important when listening to music. We then implemented an interface with 102 songs and conducted a user study with 60 participants.

External IDs:dblp:conf/cmmr/NakanoSKHGH23