Manual Transcription and Instrumental Analysis of Singing through <i>Praat</i>

• Main Author: Paolo Bravi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Instituto de Ciencias Antropológicas, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (Universidad de Buenos Aires) 2016-02-01
• Series: El Oído Pensante
• Subjects: análisis del canto; transcripción musical; percepción del canto; Praat
• Online Access: http://ppct.caicyt.gov.ar/index.php/oidopensante/article/view/8016

<p><span>In the field of ethnomusicology, the main tool-of-the-trade for music analysis has been<span> musical transcription on the score, despite its acknowledged cultural bias and the limits of staff<span> notation as a means of representing music conceived and performed outside of the Western<span> music culture. In the digital era, a number of analytical tools have been designed which may<span> serve to solve some of the problems related to the use of the score as a method for describing and<span> visualizing music. These tools allow analyses to be performed, which were virtually impossible<span> for most ethnomusicologists until a few decades ago. <span><em>Praat</em><span>, the well known software developed<span> by Paul Boersma and David Weenink and designed for phonetic studies, may also be helpful for<span> the annotation and analysis of the singing voice. This paper deals with some aspects of the use of<span> this program for musicological aims, focussing on the relation between acoustic data and<span> subjective musical interpretations and their relevance in analytic and perceptual investigations.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p>