Bernard Bel

French National Centre for Scientific Research | CNRS · Laboratoire Parole et Langage (UMR 7309)

For more than twenty centuries, musicians, instrument makers and musicologists figured out scale models and tuning procedures for the creation of music embodying the concept of "consonance". A comprehensive abstract model of microtonal intonation has been implemented in Bol Processor BP3 to apply the same to computer music

This project aims to create a small-size spoken corpus with multi-person conversations. It is a mirror of a similar corpus that is currently being developed at Aix-Marseille University (AMU). Both projects comprise a part of an ongoing collaboration between PolyU (Faculty of Humanities) and AMU under the VariAMU project.

New technologies are seen as an opportunity to 'save' endangered languages. But is this the real challenge? What use is a big amount of data if it is meant to remain 'frozen' in a closed archive? For whom and with whom is the collection constructed? Our experience with fieldwork on endangered varieties in Valjouffrey (Northern Alps) and St-Rémy (Pr...

La Banque de données parole et langage, Speech & Language Data Repository (SLDR – www.sldr.org) est un service de mutualisation et archivage de données linguistiques créé par le Laboratoire Parole et Langage (LPL, UMR 7309 CNRS-AMU). L’objectif du SLDR est de regrouper les ressources associées à la communication orale/multimodale. Une telle centra...

This presentation describes a deterministic algorithm for assigning persistent identifiers to every file of an item submitted to a long-term preservation repository in compliance with the OAIS model. The predictibility of these identifiers (unlike the ones constructed on UUIDs) makes it easy to replace current URLs pointing to files with persistent...

Introduction In our view, speech recordings feature among the most important opportunities that new technologies offer the field of endangered languages. Famous examples exist of when the linguist records the ‘last’ utterances of the ‘last’ old speaker of a community, thereby collecting the ‘last’ words of the language…the well-known ‘vanishing voi...

Dans le cadre d'un projet « Corpus en langues de France » financé par la DGLFLF, nos travaux de collecte sur le terrain de Valjouffrey (Isère) http://crdo.fr/wiki/valjouffrey nous ont amené à élaborer, à la demande des locuteurs, une graphie de cette variété d'occitan nord-alpin aux franges de la zone francoprovençale. Diverses possibilités de grap...

In 2008, a pilot project initiated by TGE Adonis, a large research infrastructure, brought together designers of data repositories, archivists and system engineers to set up collaborative oral/linguistic resource centres in France. This paper discusses challenging issues addressed by this team when implementing an Open Archival Information System (...

Le présent projet porte sur l'analyse d'un type particulier d'alternance codique : celle qui se produit chez des locuteurs relativement âgés (65-90 ans) qui, pour différentes raisons, n'ont plus parlé « leur » langue « régionale » depuis des années voire des dizaines d'années, et qui en retrouvent l'usage progressivement dans différents contextes....

The Third Volume in the series Communication Processes engages in understanding processes of communication in relation to cultural configurations and contending forces that permeate them. This volume is positioned at the interface of culture and communication—exploring ways in which interaction, negotiations, and even conflicts are voiced. It re-ex...

Le débat sur le lieu d’accouchement des femmes en France repose le plus souvent sur des arguments de comparaisons avec ce qui se passe chez nos voisins et, principalement, aux Pays­Bas. Hors, peu de gens connaissent vraiment les indicateurs de santé en périnatalité en dehors de nos frontières, et lorsqu’il est temps de s’appuyer sur des chiffres, r...

The Bol Processor project originated in 1980 as a word processor facilitating the transcription of quasi-onomatopoeic syllables used as an oral notation system for Indian drumming. It grew up as an expert system mimicking the ability to compose variations on a musical theme or assess their acceptability. Pattern grammars (a subset of type-2 formal...

This is the second book in the three-volume series Communication Processes. Communication Processes, Volume 2 argues that communication, an exchange of symbols, is the essence of society and that this exchange is the foundation on which the human collective is based. It explores how the collective sense of self is defined either with reference to,...

The many symbolic facets of medical power could be analysed at different levels of processes of social communication. The most obvious level is that of the scientific and industrial achievements credited to medical knowledge. These achievements, particularly in their main field of application, “allopathic” medicine, fend off any questioning of the...

Les centres de ressources numériques (CRN) sont une initiative conjointe de la Direction de l'Information Scientifique et du département scientifique Homme et société du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS ). Le Centre de Ressources sur la Description de l'Oral (CRDO) est le CRN centré sur les ressources orales.En juin 2006, il a été...

Le corpus « Ambedkar » est un sous-ensemble du recueil de chants de la mouture collectés depuis plusieurs décennies par le Centre for Cooperative Research in Social Sciences (CCRSS, Pune, Inde). Dans ce projet, plus de 80 000 distiques ont été répertoriés sur la base de 3617 unités sémantiques, parmi lesquelles 113 sont en relation avec Ambedkar et...

This volume is devoted to understanding the politics in, and of, communication. The contributors explore the political terrain on which various processes of communication unfold, as well as investigating the political configurations of communication processes. Through conceptual articulations, theoretical constructs and empirical data, the volume...

This is an extended and revised1 version of the paper: Symbolic and Sonic Representations of Sound-Object Structures published in M. Balaban, K. Ebcioglu & O. Laske (Eds.) “Understanding Music with AI: Perspectives on Music Cognition”, AAAI Press (1992, pp.64-109). A representational model of discrete structures of musical objects at the symbolic a...

This is an extended and revised version of the paper: Symbolic and Sonic Representations of Sound-Object Structures published in M. Balaban, K. Ebcioglu & O. Laske (Eds.) “Understanding Music with AI: Perspectives on Music Cognition”, AAAI Press (1992, pp.64-109). A representational model of discrete structures of musical objects at the symbolic an...

A paraître, CNRS Editions, collection "Monde Indien Sciences Sociales 15e-20e siècle" dirigée par Marc Gaborieau

Dans cet article nous montrons que le domaine de l'émotion-racine est l'une des expressions-clef du locuteur dans sa parole ou son chant spontanés. C'est l'état prépondérant dans lequel se trouve le locuteur qui se sent impliqué dans un contexte de discours qui le motive, quelle qu'en soit la raison, et qui de ce fait engendre dans son énoncé les i...

Dans le domaine de la prosodie, les études sur les émotions ont souvent privilégié les caractéristiques des types de discours bien catégorisés (joie, surprise, peur, colère etc.), mais ont rarement tenu compte de l'émotion «ordinaire» inhérente à toute communication. Cette «émotion ordinaire» est pourtant l'un des principaux supports de la producti...

This paper deals with various problems in quantifying musical time encountered both in the analysis of traditional drumming and in computer-generated musical pieces based on "sound-objects", hereby meaning code sequences controlling a real-time sound processor. In section 1 it is suggested that syntactic approaches may be closer to the intuitions...

Experimental studies of reading and spontaneous speech analysis have brought into light the role of tonal patterns (an aspect of speech prosody) in conveying rhetoric aspects of verbal communication hitherto overlooked by classical linguistic analysis. Speakers tend to rely on tonal patterns -- basically excursions of the fundamental pitch "F0" --...

Afin de mieux définir le genre spontané, cette étude se propose d'en illustrer quelques aspects spécifiques au travers de deux formes d'oralité fort éloignées l'une de l'autre, le dialogue de parole française et la poésie improvisée en langue marathi par des chanteuses paysannes indiennes. Ces productions sont toutes deux en fait des improvisations...

Advocacy for homebirth is based on the strong assumption that birthing is a physiological process and does not require medical interventions unless things turn "wrong." Let us assume that something might always go wrong, for instance during Clara's birth when the placenta was still retained after three hours. What needs to be done? The moment the m...

This was a letter to the Editor of Computer Music Journal (BMJ) telling about expected developments of computer music in India at the initiative of Khairagarh University. The project eventually did not take place.

The Bol Processor is the outcome of a migratory process, its design having been carried over in three phases and places: in collaboration with traditional North Indian musicians (1980-85), Western musicians in Europe (1985-93) and back in India with Carnatic musicians (1995-97).The theoretical framework of the underlying research project also evolv...

Most computer music environments privilege music representations derived from western common music notation, which make it difficult to explore musical ideas based on different concepts. This is notably the case with Indian composers eager to handle sophisticated note treatment and complex polyrhythmic structures. This paper presents recent develo...

The use of sophisticated computer systems in the design and performance of music has taken place in the context of a society that demands novelty and expects technology to play a leading role in extending the boundaries of what is musically possible. This article describes a different approach to the use of technology in composition and an alternat...

Today, musicologists are faced with problems of merging or unifying domains of knowledge, techniques and practises, which are scattered and, to some extent, disparate. It is feared that musicology may become the ground for erecting barriers and misunderstandings between specialists of these particular research domains. At short term, the cognitive/...

Bol Processor grammars are an extension of unrestricted generative grammars allowing a simple representation of string "patterns", here taken to mean repetitions and homomorphic transformations. These have been successfully applied to the simulation of improvisatory techniques in traditional drum music, using a production-rule system called "Bol Pr...

Improvisation in North Indian tabla drumming is similar to speech insofar as it is bound to an underlying system of rules determining correct sequences. The parallel is further reinforced by the fact that tabla music may be represented with an oral notation system used for its transmission and, occasionally, performance. Yet the rules are implicit...

The authors are proposing an approach to creative forms of performing arts allowing diversity and unity to coexist. In their view, this is possible through a cross-fertilization of Western and non-Western cultures in which the main theoretical and practical knowledge sources would derive from cognitive anthropology and the experience acquired by le...

An application of formal languages to the representation of musical processes is introduced. Initial interest was the structure of improvisation in North Indian tabla drum music, for which experiments have been conducted in the field as far back as 1983 with an expert system called the Bol Processor, BP1. The computer was used to generate and analy...

Jury : M. Jean-Paul Allouche M. Jean-Claude Bertrand M. Eugène Chouraqui M. Alain Guénoche M. Otto Laske M. Jean-Claude Risset M. Bernard Vecchione

Les problèmes de l'expérimentation et de la modélisation en musicologie sont abordés à partir d'une conception unifiée, cognitive, de la musicologie et de l'ethnomusicologie. On présente un travail de modélisation informatique qui a mis en application, pour la première fois, l'approche dialectique en anthropologie. La question de la validation de m...

A theoretical model is introduced, by the aid of which descriptions of sequential and concurrent processes may be built taking account of the sophistication and generality of contemporary musical concepts. This is achieved through an independent and unrestricted mapping between physical time and a symbolic set of dates. Sequential structures are co...

Although subcognitive activity is central to improvisational composition, it is also part of interpretative composition: organizing a randomly generated string of symbols requires some experience in dealing with abstract representations of music, which in turn means a long-term acquaintance with final products: sound and scores.

Cet exposé présente une méthode générale d'acquisition de connaissances dans un domaine formalisé à l'aide d'automates finis (langages réguliers). A partir d'un échantillon d'exemples le système construit un automate "presque minimal" qui n'est pas nécessairement déterministe. Cette construction peut être contrainte par des connaissances sur la seg...

This paper introduces several formal models of pattern representation in music. Polyvalent multimodal grammars describe partially overlapping sound events as found in polyphonic structures. Bol Processor grammars are characterisations of sequential events in terms of substring repetitions, homomorphisms, etc. Parsing techniques, stochastic producti...

A major problem in ethnographic description may be summed up as the search for ways to disentangle folk from analytical models. Knowledge-based systems have contributed to the development of formal structures for the manipulation of symbols associated with particular physical and conceptual phenomena. Importantly, their output can be interpreted by...

In experimental research into percussion languages, an interactive computer system, the Bol Processor, has been developed by the authors to analyse the performances of expert musicians and generate its own musical items that were assessed for quality and accuracy by the informants. The problem of transferring knowledge from a human expert to a mach...

This paper introduces several formal models of pattern representation in music. Polyvalent multimodal grammars describe partially overlapping sound events as found in polyphonic structures. Bol Processor grammars are characterizations of sequential events in terms of substring repetitions, homomorphisms, etc. Parsing techniques, stochastic producti...

Les difficultés de l'analyse acoustique de musiques extra-européennes proviennent souvent de catégorisations de phénomènes qui ne rendent pas compte des modèles explicites (ou implicites) sur lesquels s'articulent la création et la perception de structures musicales. Cet exposé définit la notion de modèle mélodique, élaborée et modifiée pendant neu...

A Report of Activities. The use of electronic techniques can add to the knowledge of traditional music, and the design of new electro-acoustical instruments and computer processing systems is capable of contributing to both musical preservation and creation. Initial work in this direction was undertaken by James Arnold and Bernard Bel, who return...

Bien que l’étude expérimentale de l’intonation de la musique classique de l’Inde ait fait l’objet de diverses tentatives depuis le début du 20e siècle, les difficultés d’une telle entreprise ne pouvaient être surmontées qu’avec des technologies et des méthodes d'analyse plus récentes. Nous présentons ici deux outils réalisés au début des années 198...

La théorie de l'intonation juste basée sur deux gammes fondamentales (grama-s), telle que la décrivent le Natya Shastra de Bharata et d'autres traités musicologiques anciens en sanscrit, formalise les relations internes des gammes diatoniques avec une étonnante précision. Quelques modifications minimes suffisent à l'adapter aux gammes non-diatoniqu...

This paper deals with the scheduling of "sound-objects", hereby meaning predefined sequences of elementary tasks in a sound processor, with each task mapped to a time-point. Given a structure of sound-objects completely ordered in a phase diagram, an "instance" of the structure may be obtained by computing the dates at which each task should be exe...

Bol Processor BP2 is a software environment for music composition in which text-oriented representations of sound events have been preferred to graphic or numeric descriptions. Text representation requires several abstraction levels. The highest level ('prescriptive' notation) is completed with descriptions of the basic sound units combining numeri...

La médecine occupe le terrain de la naissance, toujours prête à sauver des vies quel que soit le prix à payer pour celles qui ne sont pas en danger. Pour cela, elle focalise son attention sur la biomécanique de la parturition et les «soins» au nouveau-né. Une fois garantie la survie des corps de la mère et de l'enfant, elle s'intéresse — trop tard...

Une théorie de l'oeuvre selon les philosophes cachemiriens, et les techniques d'improvisation et de composition dans la musique classique savante du nord de l'Inde, présentent sous un jour différent le rôle de la mémoire et des processus cognitifs dans la création artistique, incitant à relativiser certaines positions vis à vis de la théorie de la...