A Sonification Tool For The Analysis of Large Databases of Expressive Gesture

Expert musical performance is rich with movements that facilitate performance accuracy and expressivecommunication. Studying these movements quantitatively using high-resolution motion capture systemshas been fruitful, but analysis is arduous due to the size of the data sets and performance idiosyncrasies.Compared to visual-only methods, sonification provides an interesting alternative that can ease the processof data analysis and provide additional insights. To this end, a sonification tool was designed in Max/MSPthat provides interactive access to synthesis mappings and data preprocessing functions that are specific toexpressive movement. The tool is evaluated in terms of its ability to fulfil the goals of sonification in thisdomain and the goals of expressive movement analysis more generally. Additional benefits of sonificationare discussed in light of the expressive and musical context.