cs.SDMar 13, 2026

Perpetual Dialogues: A Computational Analysis of Voice-Guitar Interaction in Carlos Paredes's Discography

Authors: Gilberto Bernardes, Nádia Moura, António Sá Pinto

Organizations: INESC TEC, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto · CEIS20, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra

Read PDF
Ask AI
Cite

Copy citation

DOINot available for this paper

Abstract

Computational musicology enables systematic analysis of performative and structural traits in recorded music, yet existing approaches remain largely tailored to notated, score-based repertoires. This study advances a methodology for analyzing voice-guitar interaction in Carlos Paredes's vocal collaborations - an oral-tradition context where compositional and performative layers co-emerge. Using source-separated stems, physics-informed harmonic modelling, and beat-level audio descriptors, we examine melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic relationships across eight recordings with four singers. Our commonality-diversity framework, combining multi-scale correlation analysis with residual-based detection of structural deviations, reveals that expressive coordination is predominantly piece-specific rather than corpus-wide. Diversity events systematically align with formal boundaries and textural shifts, demonstrating that the proposed approach can identify musically salient reorganizations with minimal human annotation. The framework further offers a generalizable computational strategy for repertoires without notated blueprints, extending Music Performance Analysis into oral-tradition and improvisation-inflected practices.

Figures & tables

Figure 1: Computational pipeline for the extraction of musical descriptors. Dashed boxes indicate expert-driven manual annotations used to compute specific descriptors and to impose hierarchical segmentations.
Figure 2: Empirical Mode Decomposition of the guitar loudness descriptor in ‘Balada do Mar’ by Paredes and Goes, showing the raw signal alongside intrinsic mode functions IMF 1, IMF 2, and IMF 3 and higher.
Figure 3: Correlation matrix for the song ‘Balada do Mar’ (Paredes and Goes), aggregated using Fisher’s z-transformation of Pearson correlations.
Figure 4: Time series of the Empirical Mode Decomposition (IMF 3+) for guitar loudness and voice rhythmic density in ‘Balada do Mar’ by Paredes and Goes. Masked segments correspond to periods of vocal inactivity below -40 dB. Vertical black lines denote section boundaries, while vertical grey lines denote phrase boundaries. Section labels are displayed at the bottom of the plot, and phrase labels are displayed at the top.
Figure 5: Residual analysis of the guitar loudness and voice rhythmic density interaction in ‘Balada do Mar’ by Paredes and Goes. The highlighted point identifies a positive outlier with a residual z-score exceeding +2.5+2.5 , indicating a breakdown of the typical contrapuntal relationship at the beginning of section B. Vertical black lines denote section boundaries, while vertical grey lines denote phrase boundaries. Section labels are displayed at the bottom of the plot, and phrase labels are displayed at the top.
Figure 6: Correlation matrices for each Paredes vocal collaboration, aggregated using Fisher’s z-transformation of Pearson correlations.
Figure 7: Correlation matrix for all Paredes vocal collaboration adopted in our study, aggregated using Fisher’s z-transformation of Pearson correlations.
More in this topic

Computational Musicology

See all 11 papers

Explore similar work

CardsList

  1. Vocal Music under Phoneme-Conditional Analysis

    Aug 31, 2026Hayoon Kim, Kyogu LeeLanguage Identification

    Music and Audio Research Group, Seoul National University · Department of Intelligence and Information, Seoul National University · AIIS, Seoul National University +1

  2. An audio-to-analysis pipeline with certified transcription for information-theoretic profiling of the piano repertoire

    Apr 25, 2026Fred Jalbert-DesforgesComputational MusicologyAutomatic Music Transcription

    Independent Music Analysis Researcher Creator of CYGNUS & LYRA Montreal, Quebec

  3. From Human Narrative to Harmonic Structure: A Human-Centered Investigation of Algorithmic Music Generation through the Chord Wheel Diagram

    Sep 28, 2026Josef Pavlíček, Petra Pavlíčková, Irena ŠtrausováMusic Generation EvaluationSymbolic Music Generation

    Faculty of Information Technology, CTU, Thákurova 9, Prague 6, 160 00, Czech Republic · University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Faculty of Economics, Department of Applied Mathematics and Informatics, Branišovská 1645/31a, České Budějovice, Czech Republic