arXiv subjects

Emmanuel Deruty

Publications and source records attributed to Emmanuel Deruty.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Methods for Pitch Analysis in Contemporary Popular Music: Multiphonic Tones Across Genres

This study argues that electronic tones routinely used in contemporary popular music - including 808-style bass and power chords - are structurally and perceptually equivalent to multiphonics in contemporary classical music. Using listening tests (n=10) and signal analysis, we show that both types of tones elicit multiple, listener-dependent pitch percepts arising from similar spectral and temporal features. These findings suggest that pitch ambiguity is not confined to experimental classical contexts but is also a feature of mainstream music production.

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arXiv2025

Evolving music theory for emerging musical languages

This chapter reconsiders the concept of pitch in contemporary popular music (CPM), particularly in electronic contexts where traditional assumptions may fail. Drawing on phenomenological and inductive methods, it argues that pitch is not an ontologically objective property but a perceptual construct shaped by listeners and conditions. Analyses of quasi-harmonic tones reveal that a single tone can convey multiple pitches, giving rise to tonal fission. The perception of pitch may also be multistable, varying for the same listener over time. In this framework, the tuning system may emerge from a tone's internal structure. A parallel with the coastline paradox supports a model of pitch grounded in perceptual variability, challenging inherited theoretical norms.

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arXiv2025

Methods for pitch analysis in contemporary popular music: multiple pitches from harmonic tones in Vitalic's music

Aims. This study suggests that the use of multiple perceived pitches arising from a single harmonic complex tone is an active and intentional feature of contemporary popular music. The phenomenon is illustrated through examples drawn from the work of electronic artist Vitalic and others. Methods. Two listening tests were conducted: (1) evaluation of the number of simultaneous pitches perceived from single harmonic tones, and (2) manual pitch transcription of sequences of harmonic tones. Relationships between signal characteristics and pitch perception were then analyzed. Results. The synthetic harmonic tones found in the musical sequences under study were observed to transmit more perceived pitches than their acoustic counterparts, with significant variation across listeners. Multiple ambiguous pitches were associated with tone properties such as prominent upper partials and particular autocorrelation profiles. Conclusions. Harmonic tones in a context of contemporary popular music can, in general, convey several ambiguous pitches. The set of perceived pitches depends on both the listener and the listening conditions.

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arXiv2025

An introduction to pitch strength in contemporary popular music analysis and production

Music information retrieval distinguishes between low- and high-level descriptions of music. Current generative AI models rely on text descriptions that are higher level than the controls familiar to studio musicians. Pitch strength, a low-level perceptual parameter of contemporary popular music, may be one feature that could make such AI models more suited to music production. Signal and perceptual analyses suggest that pitch strength (1) varies significantly across and inside songs; (2) contributes to both small- and large-scale structure; (3) contributes to the handling of polyphonic dissonance; and (4) may be a feature of upper harmonics made audible in a perspective of perceptual richness.

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arXiv2025

Methods for pitch analysis in contemporary popular music: Vitalic's use of tones that do not operate on the principle of acoustic resonance

Vitalic is an electronic music producer who has been active since 2001. Vitalic's 2005 track "No Fun" features a main synthesiser part built from a sequence of single inharmonic tones that evoke two simultaneous melodies. This part serves as a starting point for examining Vitalic's use of tones that do not operate on the principle of acoustic resonance. The study considers tones that evoke two or more simultaneous pitches and examines various inharmonic partial layouts. Examples outside Vitalic's music are also provided to suggest that similar tone properties can be found elsewhere in contemporary popular music.

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arXiv2025

Insights on Harmonic Tones from a Generative Music Experiment

The ultimate purpose of generative music AI is music production. The studio-lab, a social form within the art-science branch of cross-disciplinarity, is a way to advance music production with AI music models. During a studio-lab experiment involving researchers, music producers, and an AI model for music generating bass-like audio, it was observed that the producers used the model's output to convey two or more pitches with a single harmonic complex tone, which in turn revealed that the model had learned to generate structured and coherent simultaneous melodic lines using monophonic sequences of harmonic complex tones. These findings prompt a reconsideration of the long-standing debate on whether humans can perceive harmonics as distinct pitches and highlight how generative AI can not only enhance musical creativity but also contribute to a deeper understanding of music.

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arXiv2025

Methods for pitch analysis in contemporary popular music: phenomenological analysis of Primaal's commercial works

This article uses phenomenological analysis to examine pitch-related elements in commercial popular music, focusing on Primaal, a successful electronic music brand whose works have been licensed by major international companies. Working in collaboration with the producers, we identify musical parameters related to pitch and document how their treatment differs radically from Western classical music conventions. Central to Primaal's aesthetic is the deliberate cultivation of \emph{pitch uncertainty}, achieved through multiple techniques: tone inharmonicity, quasi-harmonic tones designed to evoke multiple simultaneous pitches, strategic boosting of upper partials, and continuous frequency trajectories inspired by the Roland TR-808 bass drum. Rather than discrete notes, pitches are distributed around scale degrees (`poles'), with the distribution width serving as an expressive parameter. The music is organised modally rather than tonally, typically focusing on a few degrees with one functioning as a `final'. We show how these pitch-related parameters articulate both large-scale and small-scale musical structure. Signal analysis, supported by psychoacoustic weighting, serves as our transcription method, avoiding the biases inherent in score-based notation. The findings contribute to music analysis, music information retrieval, computational creativity, and psychoacoustics, suggesting that pitch in contemporary popular music often operates as a continuous, multidimensional phenomenon that resists reduction to discrete note representations.

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arXiv2025

Harmonic and transposition constraints arising from the use of the Roland TR-808 bass drum

The study investigates hip-hop music producer Scott Storch's approach to tonality, where the song's key is transposed to fit the Roland TR-808 bass drum instead of tuning the drums to the song's key. This process, involving the adjustment of all tracks except the bass drum, suggests significant production motives. The primary constraint stems from the limited usable pitch range of the TR-808 bass drum if its characteristic sound is to be preserved. The research examines drum tuning practices, the role of the Roland TR-808 in music, and the sub-bass qualities of its bass drum. Analysis of TR-808 samples reveals their characteristics and their integration into modern genres like trap and hip-hop. The study also considers the impact of loudspeaker frequency response and human ear sensitivity on bass drum perception. The findings suggest that Storch's method prioritizes the spectral properties of the bass drum over traditional pitch values to enhance the bass response. The need to maintain the unique sound of the TR-808 bass drum underscores the importance of spectral formants and register in contemporary popular music production.

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arXiv2024

The evolution of inharmonicity and noisiness in contemporary popular music

Much of Western classical music relies on instruments based on acoustic resonance, which produce harmonic or quasi-harmonic sounds. In contrast, since the mid-twentieth century, popular music has increasingly been produced in recording studios, where it is not bound by the constraints of harmonic sounds. In this study, we use modified MPEG-7 features to explore and characterise the evolution of noise and inharmonicity in popular music since 1961. We place this evolution in the context of other broad categories of music, including Western classical piano music, orchestral music, and musique concr\`ete. We introduce new features that distinguish between inharmonicity caused by noise and that resulting from interactions between discrete partials. Our analysis reveals that the history of popular music since 1961 can be divided into three phases. From 1961 to 1972, inharmonicity in popular music, initially only slightly higher than in orchestral music, increased significantly. Between 1972 and 1986, this rise in inharmonicity was accompanied by an increase in noise, but since 1986, both inharmonicity and noise have moderately decreased. In recent years (up to 2020), popular music has remained much more inharmonic than popular music from the 1960s or orchestral music involving acoustic resonance instruments. However, it has become less noisy, with noise levels comparable to those of orchestral music. We relate these trends to the evolution of music production techniques. In particular, the use of multi-tracking may explain the higher inharmonicity in popular music compared to orchestral music. We illustrate these trends with analyses of key artists and tracks.

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arXiv2022

"Melatonin": A Case Study on AI-induced Musical Style

Although the use of AI tools in music composition and production is steadily increasing, as witnessed by the newly founded AI song contest, analysis of music produced using these tools is still relatively uncommon as a mean to gain insight in the ways AI tools impact music production. In this paper we present a case study of "Melatonin", a song produced by extensive use of BassNet, an AI tool originally designed to generate bass lines. Through analysis of the artists' work flow and song project, we identify style characteristics of the song in relation to the affordances of the tool, highlighting manifestations of style in terms of both idiom and sound.

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arXiv2018

Auto-adaptive Resonance Equalization using Dilated Residual Networks

In music and audio production, attenuation of spectral resonances is an important step towards a technically correct result. In this paper we present a two-component system to automate the task of resonance equalization. The first component is a dynamic equalizer that automatically detects resonances and offers to attenuate them by a user-specified factor. The second component is a deep neural network that predicts the optimal attenuation factor based on the windowed audio. The network is trained and validated on empirical data gathered from an experiment in which sound engineers choose their preferred attenuation factors for a set of tracks. We test two distinct network architectures for the predictive model and find that a dilated residual network operating directly on the audio signal is on a par with a network architecture that requires a prior audio feature extraction stage. Both architectures predict human-preferred resonance attenuation factors significantly better than a baseline approach.

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