Abstract:

For centuries there has been a very close relationship between sound and text. Virtually every culture in each epoch has tailored one or more distinctive vocal tradition. This paper journeys on an analytical and rather technical way on how text influences music. It deals with the basic notion of lyric composition and its relationship with phonetics, rhythm, and its transcendence with pitch. We focus on the sound of the voice and how it behaves in syllables and phrases by creating different spectra depending on the emotion and intention of its sound. Various hints about different mixtures and sound blending can be drawn apart by using spectral analysis by means of the FFT. These can be further parameterized into a model for signal processing, synthesis and spectral or physical modeling. Finally, we give substantial weight to text semantics, and approach our subject from a cognitive standpoint in order to take advantage on how we can extract expression models to trigger synthesis out of the relationship among lyrics and music.