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Billaboop real-time voice-driven drum generator

Title Billaboop real-time voice-driven drum generator
Publication Type Conference Paper
Year of Publication 2005
Conference Name 118th Audio Engineering Society Convention
Authors Hazan, A.
Abstract A real-time application for generating drum rhythms controlled by voice is presented. By expressive drum rhythms we refer to a sequence of drum sounds that can be a subset of a samples bank or that can be generated by different drum synthesizers. The system consists of (a) a descriptors generation component that computes a set of temporal and spectral features from each incoming frame, (b) a multi-band onset detection component based on spectral variations of the incoming stream, (c) a machine learning component which assigns to each of the vocal hits of the input stream a label. Both supervised and unsupervised approaches are considered for the learning task. The last component is (d) a beat generator that generates an output rhythmic stream taking into account continuous expressive features of the vocal performance. This work can be seen as a preliminary step in order the build a robust interface able to process a wide range of real-world signals. Indeed, several vocal onomatopoeias can correspond to the same drum label, depending of the playing style of a given performer. Thus we considered a wide range of oral percussive signals from different performers in the perspective of building a model of immediate use, whithout prior learning step. All these components are integrated into a low-latency application that allows its use for live performances.