Patterns of note onset asynchronies in expressive piano performance

This paper presents an analysis of the asynchronies among nominally simultaneous notes in ten graduate student pianists' performances of three compositions (Schumann's "Träumerei," Debussy's "La fille aux cheveux de lin," and Chopin's Prelude in D-flat major), each repeated twice and recorded in MIDI format on a Yamaha Disklavier. Note onset times were sensed from hammer motion shortly before hammer-string contact. A pervasive tendency was found for the highest-pitched notes (usually the principal melody) to lead lower-pitched notes, especially those played with the same hand. Inner notes of within-hand chords tended to lag behind outer notes. Strong correlations between average MIDI velocity difference and average lead time were found within each hand, as well as between hands for some of the pianists. Other pianists had a tendency to lead with the left hand, independent of MIDI velocity. These individual differences in between-hand coordination were stable across the three compositions and did not reflect handedness. The results suggest that within-hand asynchronies and melody leads are largely a consequence of dynamic differentiation of voices (i.e., an artifact of hammer travel time), whereas left-hand leads are an individual characteristic and, in part, a deliberate expressive strategy exhibited by some pianists.