Equipping Artificial Guitar Players with Biomechanical Constrains: a Case Study of Precision and Speed

Electronic means for generating music are often criticized for their “non-human” feeling. Models of expressive music performance have been used to alleviate this limitation by recreating human patterns found in music performance. These patterns are the outcome of both cognitive and biomechanical constrains. This paper focuses on the latter. We are interested in extracting biomechanical information from performers playing the guitar with a view on furnishing systems for expressive music performance with biomechanical constraints. For instance, patterns of the motor system can introduce human characteristics in musical performances that are not trivial to model, such as unintentional errors due to biomechanical limitations. In this paper we present the results of a taskperformance-related experiment aimed at identifying biomechanical patterns of the left-hand of guitarists during chord shape performance tasks, and how they conform to common performance principles and pitfalls.