We present a system called  Aibiki , which can support users in practicing the  shamisen , a three-stringed Japanese musical instrument, via an automatic and adaptive score scroll. We chose  Nagauta , as an example of a type of shamisen music. Each piece typically lasts 10-40 min; furthermore, both hands are required to play the shamisen, and it is not desirable to turn pages manually during a performance. In addition, there are some characteristic issues that are particular to the shamisen, including the variable tempo of the music and the unique timbre of the instrument, which makes pitch detection difficult using standard techniques. In this work, we describe an application that automatically scrolls through a musical score, initially at a predefined tempo. Because there is often a difference between the predefined tempo and tempo with which the musician plays the piece, the application adjusts speed of the score scroll based on the input from a microphone. We evaluated the performance of the application via a user study. We find that the system was able to scroll the score in time to the actual performance, and that the system was useful for practicing and playing the shamisen.
['Takahito Hamanaka', 'Daisuke Sakamoto', 'Takeo Igarashi']
Aibiki: supporting shamisen practice with adaptive automatic score scroll