Speech and music performance: Parallels and contrasts

Speech and music performance are two important systems for interhuman communication by means of acoustic signals. These signals must be adapted to the human perceptual and cognitive systems. Hence a comparitive analysis of speech and music performances is likely to shed light on these systems, particularly regarding basic requirements for acoustic communication. Two computer programs are compared, one for text-to-speech conversion and one for note-to-tone conversion. Similarities are found in the need for placing emphasis on unexpected elements, for increasing the dissimilarities between different categories, and for flagging structural constituents. Similarities are also found in the code chosen for conveying this information, e.g. emphasis by lengthening and constituent marking by final lengthening.