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Richard Kronland-Martinet
Mitsuko Aramaki
Sølvi Ystad (Eds.)
LNCS 9617
Music, Mind,
and Embodiment
11th International Symposium, CMMR 2015
Plymouth, UK, June 16–19, 2015
Revised Selected Papers
123
Lecture Notes in Computer Science 9617
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Richard Kronland-Martinet Mitsuko Aramaki
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Music, Mind,
and Embodiment
11th International Symposium, CMMR 2015
Plymouth, UK, June 16–19, 2015
Revised Selected Papers
123
Editors
Richard Kronland-Martinet Sølvi Ystad
CNRS - LMA CNRS - LMA
Marseille Cedex 20 Marseille
France France
Mitsuko Aramaki
CNRS - LMA
Marseille
France
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Preface
The 11th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research,

CMMR2015 “Music, Mind and Embodiment” (http://cmr.soc.plymouth.ac.uk/cmmr2015/),
was held in Plymouth during June 16–19, 2015, and was hosted by the Interdisciplinary
Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR) in their newly built Performance Arts Centre,
The House. The conference theme, “Music, Mind and Embodiment,” reflected the highly
interdisciplinary research interests of this center, which span from musicology and compo-
sition to biomedical applications of music and development of new music technologies.
This 11th CMMR event, which was co-organized by the ICCMR and the LMA-
CNRS (France), hosted delegates from Europe, Asia, Australia, and America over four
days. The scientific program covered a total of ten oral sessions, three poster sessions,
and four installations that included traditional topics of previous CMMR events and
specific topics related to the theme of the conference and the specific research interests
of ICCMR. Three keynote speakers were invited to the conference: Hugues Vinet
(Director of Research and Development, IRCAM), David Rosenboom (Professor of
Music and Dean of the School of Music at California Institute of the Arts), and Eduardo
Miranda (Professor of Computer Music and Director of ICCMR). The symposium also
included two satellite workshops, one on music neurotechnology and another on motion
and music. In addition, a series of 3 concerts were held in the evenings after the scientific
sessions.
The CMMR symposium was initiated in 2003 and has been organized in various
cities in Europe and Asia. Although the CMMR acronym has remained unchanged
since the first symposium, its meaning changed slightly from “Computer Music
Modelling and Retrieval” to “Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research” in 2012
owing to the strong expansion of topics that were present in CMMR 2012, covering
computer science, social science, and humanities. The CMMR 2015 proceedings
volume is the 11th book published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Computer
Sciences series (LNCS 2771, LNCS 3310, LNCS 3902, LNCS 4969, LNCS 5493,
LNCS 5954, LNCS 6684, LNCS 7172, LNCS 7900, LNCS 8905). This year’s volume
contains a total of 30 peer-reviewed and revised articles centered around the conference
theme “Music, Mind and Embodiment.” It is divided into six sections devoted to
various sound and technology issues with a particular emphasis on performance, music
generation, composition, analysis, and information retrieval (Chapters 2 to 5), as well
as relations between sound, motion, and gestures (Chapter 1) and human perception
and culture (Chapter 6).
We would like to thank all the participants of CMMR2015 who contributed to make
this 11th symposium a memorable happening. We would also like to thank the Program
Committee members for their indispensable paper reports and the Music Committee for
selecting the music contributions. We are very grateful to the local Organizing Committee
at the ICCMR, who took care of all the practical issues and insured a smooth and efficient
VI Preface
coordination between attendees, speakers, audiences, and musicians in both the scientific
and artistic program. Finally, we would like to thank Springer for accepting to publish the
CMMR 2015 proceedings in their LNCS series.
June 2016 Richard Kronland-Martinet

Mitsuko Aramaki
Sølvi Ystad
Organization
The 11th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research

CMMR 2015 “Music, Mind and Embodiment” was co-organized by the Interdisciplinary
Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR), Plymouth, UK, and the Laboratoire de
Mécanique et d’Acoustique, Marseille, France.
Symposium Chair
Eduardo R. Miranda ICCMR, Plymouth University, UK
Paper, Program, and Proceedings Chairs

Richard Kronland-Martinet CNRS-LMA, France
Mitsuko Aramaki CNRS-LMA, France
Sølvi Ystad CNRS-LMA, France
Joel Eaton ICCMR, Plymouth University, UK
Local Organizing Committee

Duncan Williams ICCMR, Plymouth University, UK
Federico Visi ICCMR, Plymouth University, UK
Jared Drayton ICCMR, Plymouth University, UK
Ed Braund ICCMR, Plymouth University, UK
Aurélien Antoine ICCMR, Plymouth University, UK
Michael McLoughlin ICCMR, Plymouth University, UK
Nuria Bonet Filella ICCMR, Plymouth University, UK
Program Committee
Duncan Williams ICCMR, Plymouth University, UK
Paper Committee
Federico Avanzini University of Padova, Italy
Mathieu Barthet Queen Mary University of London, UK
VIII Organization
Frédéric Bevilacqua IRCAM, France

Stefan Bilbao University of Edinburgh, UK
Tim Blackwell Goldsmith, UK
Andrew Brown Grith University, Australia
Jamie Bullock Birmingham Conservatoire, UK
John Ashley Burgoyne University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Marcelo Caetano INESC Porto, Portugal
Emilios Cambouroupoulos Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Amilcar Cardoso University of Coimbra, Portugal
John Dack Middlesex University, UK
Olivier Derrien Toulon-Var University and CNRS-LMA, France
Arne Eigenfeldt Simon Fraser University, Canada
Simon Emmerson De Montfort University, UK
Georg Essl University of Michigan, USA
Bruno Giordano University of Glasgow, UK
Rolf Inge Gødoy University of Oslo, Norway
Brian Gygi National Biomedical Unit for Hearing Research, UK
Fernando Iazzetta USP, Brazil
Kristffer Jensen Aalborg University, Denmark
Alexander Jensenius University of Oslo, Norway
Luis Jure University of Montevideo, Uruguay
Timour Klouche National Institute for Music Research, Germany
Darius Kucinskas Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania
Thor Magnusson University of Sussex, UK
Sylvain Marchand University of Brest, France
Jean-Arthur University of Bordeaux, France
Micoulaud-Franchi
Peter Nelson University of Edinburgh, UK
Mark Plumbley University of Surrey, UK
Marcelo Queiroz University of São Paulo, Brazil
Matthew Rodger Queen’s University Belfast, UK
Emery Schubert University of New South Wales, Australia
Diemo Schwarz IRCAM, France
Anna Troisi Bournemouth University, UK
Marcelo Wanderley CIRMMT, Canada
Ian Whalley University of Waikato, New Zealand
Organization IX
Additional Reviewers
Darryl Cameron Sven-Amin Lembke Etienne Thoret

Song Hui Chon Marcella Mandanici Yinan Tsao
Simon Conan Nicola Orio Doug Van Nort
Maximos Gaëtan Parseihian Olivier Warusfel
Kaliakatsos-Papakostas Charalampos Saitis Asterios Zacharakis
Mindaugas Kavaliauskas Bertrand Scherrer
Contents
Sound, Motion and Gesture
Comparing the Timing of Movement Events for Air-Drumming Gestures. . . . 3

Luke Dahl
Assessing the Influence of Constraints on Cellists’ Postural Displacements

and Musical Expressivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Jocelyn Rozé, Mitsuko Aramaki, Richard Kronland-Martinet,
Thierry Voinier, Christophe Bourdin, Delphine Chadefaux,
Marvin Dufrenne, and Sølvi Ystad
Musical Meter, Rhythm and the Moving Body: Designing Methods

for the Analysis of Unconstrained Body Movements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Luiz Naveda, Isabel C. Martínez, Javier Damesón,
Alejandro Pereira Ghiena, Romina Herrera,
and Manuel Alejandro Ordás
Evaluating Input Devices for Dance Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Mari Romarheim Haugen and Kristian Nymoen
Estimation of Guitar Fingering and Plucking Controls Based on Multimodal

Analysis of Motion, Audio and Musical Score . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Alfonso Perez-Carrillo, Josep-Lluis Arcos, and Marcelo Wanderley
Analysis of Mimed Violin Performance Movements of Neophytes: Patterns,

Periodicities, Commonalities and Individualities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Federico Visi, Esther Coorevits, Rodrigo Schramm,
and Eduardo R. Miranda
Digital Musical Instruments, Embodiment and Performance
Skill Development and Stabilisation of Expertise for Electronic

Music Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Jan C. Schacher and Patrick Neff
The Hybrid Brain Computer Music Interface - Integrating Brainwave

Detection Methods for Extended Control in Musical Performance Systems. . . 132
Joel Eaton and Eduardo R. Miranda
Feeling Sound: Exploring a Haptic-Audio Relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

Joanne Armitage and Kia Ng
XII Contents
BOEUF: A Unified Framework for Modeling and Designing

Digital Orchestras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Florent Berthaut and Luke Dahl
Decomposing a Composition: On the Multi-layered Analysis of Expressive

Music Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Esther Coorevits, Dirk Moelants, Stefan Östersjö, David Gorton,
and Marc Leman
3CMS: An Interactive Decision System for Live Performance . . . . . . . . . . . 190

Rodrigo Schramm, Helena de Souza Nunes, Leonardo de Assis Nunes,
Federico Visi, and Eduardo R. Miranda
Composition Tools
A Viewpoint Approach to Symbolic Music Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Louis Bigo and Darrell Conklin
Balancing Audio: Towards a Cognitive Structure of Sound Interaction

in Music Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Mads Walther-Hansen
Conchord: An Application for Generating Musical Harmony by Navigating

in the Tonal Interval Space. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Gilberto Bernardes, Diogo Cocharro, Carlos Guedes,
and Matthew E.P. Davies
Musical Variation and Improvisation Based on Multi-resolution

Representations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Johan Loeckx
Music with Unconventional Computing: Granular Synthesis

with the Biological Computing Substrate Physarum Polycephalum . . . . . . . . 271
Edward Braund and Eduardo R. Miranda
Data Mining, Music Information Retrieval and Artificial Intelligence
Evaluation and Prediction of Harmonic Complexity Across 76 Years

of Billboard 100 Hits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Kristoffer Jensen and David G. Hebert
Information Rate for Fast Time-Domain Instrument Classification . . . . . . . . . 297

Jordan Ubbens and David Gerhard
Escaping from the Abyss of Manual Annotation: New Methodology

of Building Polyphonic Datasets for Automatic Music Transcription . . . . . . . 309
Li Su and Yi-Hsuan Yang
Contents XIII
The Clustering of Expressive Timing Within a Phrase in Classical Piano

Performances by Gaussian Mixture Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
Shengchen Li, Dawn A.A. Black, and Mark D. Plumbley
Modeling Affective Responses to Music Using Audio Signal Analysis

and Physiology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
Konstantinos Trochidis and Simon Lui
A New Look at Musical Expectancy: The Veridical Versus the General

in the Mental Organization of Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
Emery Schubert and Marcus Pearce
Music Analysis, Music Generation and Emotion
Emotional Experiences of Ascending Melodic Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373

Hans T. Zeiner-Henriksen
rGTTM III: Learning-Based Time-Span Tree Generator Based on PCFG. . . . 387

Masatoshi Hamanaka, Keiji Hirata, and Satoshi Tojo
BioComputer Music: Generating Musical Responses with Physarum

polycephalum-Based Memristors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
Edward Braund and Eduardo R. Miranda
‘Understood at Last’?: A Memetic Analysis of Beethoven’s ‘Bloody Fist’ . . . 420

Steven Jan
Music and Dementia: Two Case-Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438

Alexis Kirke, Belinda Dixon, and Eduardo R. Miranda
Strictly Rhythm: Exploring the Effects of Identical Regions and Meter

Induction in Rhythmic Similarity Perception. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
Daniel Gómez-Marín, Sergi Jordà, and Perfecto Herrera
Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Unconstrained Body Responses

to Argentinian and Afro-Brazilian Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
Luiz Naveda, Isabel C. Martínez, Javier Damesón,
Alejandro Pereira Ghiena, Romina Herrera,
and Manuel Alejandro Ordás
Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483

Sound, Motion and Gesture
Comparing the Timing of Movement Events
for Air-Drumming Gestures
Luke Dahl(B)
Department of Music, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA

lukedahl@virginia.edu
Abstract. New air-instruments allow us to control sound by moving

our bodies in space without manipulating a physical object. However
when we want to trigger a discrete sound at a precise time, for example
by making a drumming gesture, the timing feels wrong. This work aims
to understand what aspects of a performer’s movement correspond to
their subjective sense of when the sound should occur. A study of air-
drumming gestures was conducted, and the timing of eight movement
events based on movements of the hand, wrist, elbow joint, and wrist
joint are examined. In general, it is found that movement events based
on peaks in acceleration are better because they occur earlier and have
less noise than do events based on changes of direction.
Keywords: Gesture · Musical gesture · Air-instruments · Air-

drumming · New interfaces for musical expression
1 Introduction
We evolved to touch and manipulate physical objects. Our ancestors survived
by using their hands and bodies to acquire food and resources and to modify
their environment. They created tools that fit in hand and amplified their power,
precision, and reach, and these tools were used not only for practical purposes
but also for the creation of culture and art.
Traditional musical instruments are tools we manipulate with our bodies
and hands in order to transform bodily energy into delightful sounds: we strike a
drum, pluck a string, draw a bow across a string, or blow into a flute. Even today
most of our new instruments require the musician’s touch: we press a key, push
a slider, turn a knob. However, our physical connection with our instruments
is becoming tenuous. When we drag a mouse or swipe across a touchscreen we
touch a physical object, but we don’t feel the moment our pointer contacts a
virtual button or plucks a virtual string.
Some new instruments, beginning with the Theremin, require no contact
with the instrument itself, allowing us to control sound by making gestures
“in the air”. The recent affordability of motion sensing technologies such as
inertial sensors and depth cameras, has led to a proliferation of experimental
“air-instruments” which enable a performer to create music by moving their
body in free space. We still move our bodies, yet touch is missing.

c Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
R. Kronland-Martinet et al. (Eds.): CMMR 2015, LNCS 9617, pp. 3–21, 2016.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-46282-0 1
4 L. Dahl
How does the lack of touch affect the way we perform these new air-
instruments? Some instruments, such as the Theremin, provide continuous sonic
feedback as the performer moves their body in space. These do not seem to suffer
in their ability to afford expressive musical performance, as is evidenced by the
history of virtuosic Theremin performers. However, instruments which allow the
performer to trigger a sonic event – for example by making a sudden movement
of the hand in the air – do seem to suffer from the lack of tactile feedback. These
instruments often feel unpredictable, sometimes triggering sound at the wrong
time, and other times failing to trigger a sound at all. This makes performing
complex rhythmic material challenging, to say the least.
The goal of the research described in this paper is to better understand
the gestures that performers make with these air-instruments, so that we can
design instruments which are more accurate and responsive, thus enabling better
musical experiences for both performer and listener.
1.1 The Challenges of Designing Air-Instruments

I define instrumental air-gestures as purposeful movements of a performer’s
body in free space which are used to control an immediately responsive sound-
generating instrument. These can be divided into continuous air gestures, in
which some aspect of movement (e.g. the height of the hand) is continuously
mapped to some sonic variable (e.g. filter cutoff frequency), and discrete air-
gestures, which are meant to trigger a sonic event (e.g. a note onset) at a precise
time.
In my experience designing air-instruments [4], and from observing perfor-
mances of other air-instruments, it is difficult to design an instrument that senses
discrete air-gestures in a way that allows for precise rhythmic performance. From
the performer’s perspective the timing often feels wrong. To design such instru-
ments we must create an algorithm that uses movement data to decide when to
trigger a sonic event. It seems that most instrument designers do this based on
some heuristic, and the poor performance of these instruments suggests that we
are choosing the wrong heuristic.
A Subjective Movement Event. The work in this paper is based on the

assumption that when a performer makes a discrete air-gesture, such as striking
a non-existent drum, they do something with their body to create an internal
sensation of a moment in time, and they intend the resulting sound, a sonic
event, to occur at the same time as this internally sensed movement event. I call
this embodied sensation the subjective movement event. If instrument design-
ers understood which aspects of the performer’s movement correspond to the
subjective movement event we could design our instruments to detect it.
1.2 Studying Discrete Air-Gestures

With the goal of better understanding discrete air-gestures and the accompa-
nying subjective movement event, I conducted a study in which musicians were
Comparing the Timing of Movement Events for Air-Drumming Gestures 5
recorded performing air-drumming gestures in time to the sound of a simple

drum rhythm. Their movements were analyzed to detect a number of movement
events, which are hypothetical candidates for the subjective movement event.
By looking at the timing of these movement events with respect to the sonic
events to which they are intended to correspond, we can begin to understand
the enacted and embodied sense of discrete moments in gestures. In [3] I pre-
sented the details of this study and an analysis of movement events based on
tracking the position of the hand and wrist in space. This paper summarizes
that work and extends it to include an analysis of movement events based on
the changing angles of the elbow and wrist joints.
1.3 Related Work

There is a large body of research describing new digital musical instruments
which enable gestural control of sound generating processes. Much of this work
is concerned with strategies for mapping from gestural data to sound parameters
(see [15] for a summary, and [14] for a recent example).
Godøy et al. discuss the mimetic instrumental performance-like gestures that
people often make when listening to music [6]. They conducted a study of “air
piano” performance, and analysed the degree of correspondence between listen-
ers’ gestures and the gestures of the pianist who performed the music.
Previous work related to discrete air-gestures includes descriptions of per-
formance systems which enable discrete air-gestures [4,7,8,11], studies of dis-
crete musical air-gestures [2,10], a study of snare drumming movements [5], and
studies of conducting gestures [9,13]. These employ a variety of techniques for
detecting the end of a striking gesture or the beat of a conducting gesture, or
for triggering sounds from the movement of the performer’s hand or of the tip
of a drumstick or baton. These techniques can be grouped into the following
categories:
– Detecting when the position passes through some spatial threshold [10,11].
– Detecting extrema in position, such as vertical minima [2,13].
– Detecting when the velocity surpasses some threshold [4,7].
– Detecting positive extrema (i.e. peaks) in the magnitude acceleration [9,13].
– Detecting when the acceleration surpasses some threshold [8].
– Detecting when the third derivative of position (a.k.a. jerk ) surpasses some
threshold [5].
Interestingly, all of these track external spatial variables or their derivatives,
and none employ tracking the movement of the performer’s joint angles.
Sensorimotor Synchronization. Gesturing in time to music is form of senso-

rimotor synchronization, which has been the topic of research for decades [1,12].
One of the primary findings is that when tapping in time to an audible beat
(usually a metronome click), most people tap before the beat by up to 100 msec.
This shows that when a performer intends a movement event to correspond to a
6 L. Dahl
sonic event, they may not occur at the same time, even though to the performer
they seem to. This suggests that the subjective movement event (the event we
hope to detect) may not coincide with, and is likely to precede, the sonic event
it is meant to trigger.
2 A Study of Air-Drumming Gestures

The goal of this research is to understand discrete air-gestures and their timing
with respect to the intended sound, so that we can design better air-instruments.
However, it is difficult to study this situation directly. If we record a musician per-
forming an air-instrument which generates sound, the resulting sound may not
occur at the time the performer intended. But we, as instrument designers, want
to know at what time they intended the sound to occur. I address this chicken-
and-egg problem by substituting a proxy activity – performing drumming ges-
tures in time to a pre-recorded sound (which I call mimetic air-drumming) – for
the activity we wish to understand – performing drumming gestures in order to
trigger sounds (or productive air-drumming).
repeat 4x
S S S S F F F F F S
Fig. 1. The stimulus rhythm, played at 100 BPM. Slow notes are labeled ‘S’ and fast
notes ‘F’
The study participants heard a recording of a drum playing the rhythm shown
in Fig. 1, which has an equal number of “slow” and “fast” notes. Participants
were instructed to gesture as if they were performing these sounds by striking
an imaginary drum somewhere in front of them. The movements of each par-
ticipant’s right hand, wrist, elbow, and shoulder were recorded with a motion
capture system. The drum rhythms were also recorded into the motion capture
system in order to facilitate precise comparison of the timing of the movement
and the sound.
The participants were 5 women and 5 men, all of whom had experience
playing a musical instrument and were able to read notated music. The median
age was 23 years, and the median length of musical experience was 16 years.
Further details on the data recording and participants can be found in [3].
2.1 Detecting Movement Events

In this paper I examine eight externally-detectable movement events, which are
hypothetical candidates for the subjective movement event. These are based on
the movement of the performer’s hand and wrist in space, and on the changing
angles of the performer’s elbow and wrist joints. These movement events can
be divided into change-of-direction events – moments when the body part or

joint angle suddenly changes direction – and acceleration peak events, which are
moments of sudden deceleration of the body part or joint angle. The movement
events and techniques for detecting them will now be described in detail.
Hand and Wrist Hits. The hand hit is the moment at the end of the striking
gesture when the performer’s hand suddenly changes direction. If they were
striking a physical drum, the hit would correspond to the moment when the hand
(or drumstick) contacts the head of the drum, imparts energy to the instrument,
thus initiating the sound, and rebounds in the opposite direction.
For a gesture in free space where no physical contact occurs, how do we detect
the end of the strike? If the movement were in a single dimension (e.g. up and
down) we could simply detect extrema (i.e. the moment of minimum height).
Since the virtual drum’s location and orientation were not precisely specified,
participants’ movements were not restricted to any particular plane or direction.
So I define the hand hit as the moment at the end of a striking gesture where
the hand suddenly changes direction.
An algorithm for detecting sudden changes of direction was presented in [3].
In brief, the motion capture system tracks the location of a reflective marker on
the back of the participant’s right hand, and from this the 3-D velocity of the
hand is calculated. This velocity vector is passed through two low-pass filters.
One filter has a time constant of 100 msec, and the other has a time constant of
5 msec. The outputs of these filters can be thought of as slow and fast estimates
of the hand’s velocity vector. When the hand changes direction quickly the angle
between these vectors briefly increases as the slow estimate lags behind the fast
estimate. Hits are detected as peaks in the rate of change of this angle (see
Fig. 2).
If the angle between the performer’s forearm and hand is not held still (i.e.
the wrist joint is allowed to move), the performer’s hand and wrist may change
direction at different times. The same hit detection algorithm is applied to the
movement of the wrist, where the wrist is defined as the point half-way between
markers on the distal condyles of the radius and ulna. The resulting events, or
wrist hits, are moments when the wrist suddenly changes direction at the end of
a drumming gesture.
Acceleration Peaks of the Hand and Wrist. Upon examining the movement
data I discovered that large peaks in the magnitude acceleration of the hand often
occur close to the onset of the associated audio event. (In fact these peaks are
decelerations as the participant sharply halts the movement of the hand.) For
an unimpeded movement, an acceleration is the result of a muscular force, and
so an acceleration peak is a good candidate for the subjective movement event.
An algorithm for detecting these hand acceleration peaks is described in [3], and
a result is shown in Fig. 3. The same algorithm is applied to the location of the
wrist to detect wrist acceleration peaks.
8 L. Dahl
1 Position z
Position x
Theta slope
Magnitude Velocity
0.8
Audio onset
Hit
Normalized magnitude
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
14.6 14.7 14.8 14.9 15 15.1 15.2 15.3
Time [seconds]
Fig. 2. Detecting the hand hit for an air-drumming gesture. Fast and slow estimates of
the hand’s velocity vector are calculated. The angle between these estimates is Theta.
Hits are detected as peaks in the rate of change (Theta slope) of this angle. In this case
the hit corresponds to a minima in magnitude velocity, and falls near to extrema in
both the vertical (z) and forward (x) directions. We can see that this hit occurs after
the onset of its associated audio event.
1 Position z
Position x
Magnitude acceleration
Audio onset
0.8
Acceleration peak
Hit
Normalized magnitude
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
9 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8
Time [seconds]
Fig. 3. Detecting the hand acceleration peak for a strike gesture. This acceleration peak
occurs before the associated audio onset, and almost 100 msec before the hand hit.
Calculating Joint Angles. The remaining four movement events are based
on the angle of the performer’s elbow and wrist joints. To calculate the elbow
angle, a line segment representing the upper arm is defined as passing from a
marker on the top of the right shoulder to a point half-way between markers on
the lateral and medial condyles of the elbow joint. A line segment representing
the lower arm (or forearm) is defined as passing from the elbow to the wrist (as
defined above). The elbow angle is calculated as the angle between the upper
and lower arm segments. An angle of π radians represents a fully extended elbow
joint.
Unlike the elbow, the wrist is a complex joint. Its movements can be defined in
two dimensions. In flexion/extension the hand moves in the direction of the palm
(flexion) or the back of the hand (extension). In ulnar/radial deviation the hand
moves in the direction of the little finger (ulna) or thumb (radius). I observed
that for air-drumming gestures the ulnar/radial deviation has a small range, its
measurements are noisy, and it tends to correlate with flexion/extension. Thus
I used only the flexion/extension angle of the wrist. Two line segments are used
to define the wrist angle: the lower arm segment described above, and a segment
representing the hand which passes from the wrist to a marker on the back of
the hand at the base of the third finger. I find a plane whose normal passes from
the ulnar side of the wrist to the radial side of the wrist. The lower arm and
hand segments are projected onto this plane, and the wrist angle is taken as the
angle between these two projections.
Peaks of the Elbow and Wrist Joint Angles. In an air-drumming gesture

with a downward strike, the elbow joint is extending as the hand falls. I define the
moment near the end of the strike when the elbow angle changes direction, from
extending to flexing, as the elbow angle peak. Similarly, for most participants the
wrist joint angle also changes direction, from flexion to extension, near the end
of the strike. The moment this occurs is defined as the wrist angle peak.
Since the changing position of the hand and wrist take place in three-
dimensional space, detecting changes-of-direction was not simple. However, the
angular movements of the elbow and wrist joints are, as I’ve defined them,
one-dimensional. Therefore, detecting the moment the joint changes direction
is straight-forward, and is equivalent to finding peaks in the joint angle. To do
so, I find all negatively-sloped zero-crossings in the angular velocity (these cor-
respond to positive peaks in angle), and then discard those for which the joint
angle is below a threshold. This ensures that only peaks near the end of the
strike are detected. Figure 4 shows some examples.
Acceleration Peaks of the Elbow and Wrist Joint Angles. The sudden
changes in the angular velocity of the elbow and wrist joints at the end of the
striking gesture are the result of torques applied to the joints. These torques are
either the result of muscular effort, or they are due to the mechanical constraints
of the joint itself. Figure 4 shows that both the wrist and elbow joints experience
sharp negative peaks in angular acceleration before the corresponding joint angle
peak. These are detected in a manner similar to that used for detecting angular
peaks. First I locate positively-sloped zero-crossings in the angular jerk (the third
derivative of joint angle), and then remove those for which the acceleration does
not surpass a threshold. These events are then labelled as elbow angle acceleration
peaks, and wrist angle acceleration peaks.
10 L. Dahl
0.75
0.5
Joint angle [radians/PI]
Elbow angle
Elbow angle acc.
Elbow peaks
0.25
Elbow acc. peaks
Wrist angle
Wrist angle acc.
Wrist peaks
Wrist acc. peaks
Audio onset
38.4 38.6 38.8 39 39.2 39.4 39.6 39.8 40 40.2

Time [seconds]
Fig. 4. Detecting joint angle peaks and angular acceleration peaks of the elbow and
wrist joints for a single participant. Elbow and wrist angle peaks occur at positive
extrema of the respective joint angle, and acceleration peaks occur at negative extrema
of the joint’s angular acceleration. One slow note and two fast notes are shown.
2.2 Summary of Movement Events
We now have eight movement events, summarized in Table 1, which can be cat-
egorized with respect to three dimensions:
1. Position vs. joint angle: Four events are based on tracking the position of
parts of the body, and four are based on the angles of joints.
2. Body part: Two events are based on the hand, two on the wrist, two on the
elbow joint, and two on the wrist joint.
3. Direction change vs. acceleration peak : Four events detect changes of direction
(in either position or joint angle), and four detect peaks in positional or
angular acceleration.
Table 1. The movement events analyzed in this paper.
Change-of-direction Peak in acceleration

Position Hand hits Hand acceleration peaks
Wrist hits Wrist acceleration peaks
Joint angle Elbow angle peaks Elbow angle acceleration peaks
Wrist angle peaks Wrist angle acceleration peaks
3 Analysis and Results

We are interested in understanding the subjective movement event, that is, the
internal sensation that the air-drummer enacts in their movement, and which
they intend to correspond to the resulting sound. Each movement event functions
as a hypothetical candidate for this subjective movement event. In order to
evaluate a movement event we examine its timing with respect to the sonic
event (i.e. the drum sound) to which it is meant to correspond. This analysis
proceeds as follows: for each trial the audio recording is analyzed to detect the
onset time of each note (see [3] for implementation details). This functions as the
“ground truth” of when the performer intended the sound to occur. Each audio
onset is then paired with the movement events, one of each type of movement
event, which occurred closest to it in time.
For each movement event time the associated audio onset time is subtracted
to get the time offset (or asynchrony) between the audio event and the movement
event. A negative offset indicates that the movement event preceded the audio
event, and a positive offset means the movement event came after. All subsequent
analysis is performed on these offset times.
3.1 Calculating Timing Statistics
For each participant, the data from each trial were aggregated and then split
into the slow note and fast note conditions. This results in 40 events for each
condition (5 events per rhythm × 4 repetitions of the rhythm × 2 trials). In
order to reject bad data due to detection errors or participant mistakes, events
whose offset is greater than half the time between notes (600 msec for slow
notes, 300 msec for fast notes) were removed. And events which lay more than
two standard deviations from the mean for each condition and participant were
rejected as outliers.
For the following results we want to know whether the mean or standard
deviation offset times differ between various conditions. For a given condition
and movement event, the mean tells us by how much the event tends to precede
or lag behind the audio onset, and the standard deviation can be considered
a measure of the “noise” in the event detection or in the movement itself. To
infer whether two conditions differ in the population, we compute the mean
(or standard deviation) of each participant’s offset times for the conditions we
wish to compare. We then conduct a two-sided paired-sample t-test of the ten
participants’ means (or standard deviations) for the two conditions. For example,
to compare whether the standard deviation of hand hit times is different between
slow notes and fast notes, I calculate the standard deviation of each participant’s
slow hits, then the standard deviations of each participant’s fast hits. With these
ten sample standard deviations for each condition I conduct a t-test with nine
degrees of freedom.
12 L. Dahl
3.2 Analysis of Mean Offsets
We can begin to evaluate these eight movement events by looking at the mean
offset time between the movement event and the sonic event to which it cor-
responds. Real-time systems require us to detect the event before the sound is
meant to occur. Do some movement events occur earlier or later than others?
Do some occur before the audio onset? The rhythm which the participants ges-
tured in time to has notes at two different metric levels. Does the timing of these
movement events change with note speed? The answers to these questions can
begin to tell us which movement events are most useful, and may suggest which
are better candidates for the subjective movement event.
Comparing Change-of-Direction Events and Acceleration Peak

Events. Figure 5 shows box plots of the mean offset times for all movement
events and both note speeds. Examination shows that for each pair of movement
events the acceleration peak event comes before the change-of-direction event.
This appears to be true for both slow notes and fast notes, but the differences
seem smaller for fast notes.
A repeated measures two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted
on all offset means. The two within-subjects factors were movement event, with
7 degrees of freedom, and note speed with one degree of freedom. There were
significant effects of both movement event (F = 14.599, p = 3.9e − 11) and
Offset means for slow notes Offset means for fast notes
0.1 0.1
0.05 0.05
Offset [seconds]
Offset [seconds]
0 0
-0.05 -0.05
-0.1 -0.1
Elbow angle acc. peaks

Wrist angle acc. peaks

Elbow angle peaks
Elbow angle peaks

Wrist angle peaks
Wrist angle peaks

Hand acc. peaks
Hand acc. peaks

Wrist acc. peaks
Wrist acc. peaks

Hand hits
Hand hits
Wrist hits
Wrist hits
Fig. 5. Box plots of the mean offset times for all participants for each movement event.
For each event, the line marks the median, the dot marks the mean, the edges of the
box are the 25th and 75th percentiles, and the whiskers extend to the most extreme
data. Negative times indicate the movement event came before the audio onset.
note speed (F = 8.426, p = 0.0175). There was also a significant interaction

between movement event and note speed (F = 13.188, p = 2.5e − 10). Post
hoc comparisons were conducted between the four change of direction events
and their associated acceleration peak events for both slow and fast notes using
paired samples t-tests. Results are shown in Table 2.
Table 2. The results of t-tests comparing the offset means for each change-of-direction
event (hits and peaks) and the acceleration peak event for the related body location
or joint angle. The 95 % confidence interval is in milliseconds.
Body location Result T(9) P 95 % CI

Slow notes
Hand position Acceleration peaks precede hits 4.884 0.0009 31 to 85
Wrist position Acceleration peaks precede hits 4.1889 0.0023 22.4 to 75
Elbow joint angle Acceleration peaks precede peaks 3.3777 0.0082 9.5 to 47.9
Wrist joint angle Acceleration peaks precede peaks 3.1416 0.0119 4 to 24.3
Fast notes
Hand position Acceleration peaks precede hits 4.5294 0.0014 15 to 44.8
Wrist position No difference found n.s
Elbow joint angle No difference found n.s
Wrist joint angle Acceleration peaks precede peaks 2.5824 0.0119 2.1 to 31.8
If we apply the conservative Bonferroni correction to these eight results, in

which case only p-values less than 0.00625 would be considered significant, we
find that the joint angle results do not pass significance. Nevertheless, the trend
which we observed is, for the most part, true: acceleration peak events precede
their associated change of direction event, and the difference is less pronounced
for fast notes and for joint angle events.
Comparing Fast and Slow Notes. Figure 5 shows that fast notes appear to
occur earlier than slow notes for all movement events. This difference appears
to be smaller for events based on acceleration peaks than it is for the change-
of-direction events. To test these observations the mean offsets of slow and fast
notes for all eight events were compared and the results shown in Table 3.
In general we find that the timing of change-of-direction events changes sig-
nificantly between slow and fast notes, with fast notes occurring earlier than slow
notes, whereas the timing of acceleration peak events does not differ with note
speed. The exception to this rule is the wrist angle. Like the other acceleration
peak features, wrist angle acceleration peaks are not found to differ with note
speed. Unlike the other change-of-direction events, wrist angle peaks are not
found to be different between fast and slow notes. These results are visualized
in Fig. 6.
14 L. Dahl
Table 3. The results of t-tests comparing the offset time of fast notes with that of
slow notes for each movement event. The 95 % confidence interval is in milliseconds.
Movement event Result T(9) P 95 % CI

Hand hits Fast notes are earlier than slow 4.1889 0.0023 22.4 to 75
Hand acc. peaks No difference found n.s.
Wrist hits Fast notes are earlier than slow 5.2030 5.6e − 04 9.5 to 47.9
Wrist acc. peaks No difference found n.s.
Elbow angle peaks Fast notes are earlier than slow 4.1615 0.0024 18.7 to 63.1
Elbow angle acc. peaks No difference found n.s.
Wrist angle peaks No difference found n.s.
Wrist angle acc. peaks No difference found n.s.
Interaction between note speed and movement event

0.06
Hand hits
0.05
Hand acc. peaks
Wrist hits
0.04
Wrist acc. peaks
Elbow peaks
0.03
Elbow acc. peaks
Mean offset [seconds]
Wrist angle peaks

0.02
0.01
-0.01
-0.02
-0.03
-0.04
Slow notes Fast notes
Fig. 6. Comparing fast and slow notes for all movement events. Solid lines are sig-
nificant differences, and dashed are not significant. Dark lines are change-of-direction
events, and light lines are acceleration peak events.
Linked Movement Events. Table 4 contains the the means across the pop-
ulation of both the mean offsets and the offset standard deviations. Figure 6
visualizes the same data for mean offsets. Upon inspection these yield the fol-
lowing observations.
The acceleration peaks of the hand, and the angular acceleration peaks of the
wrist joint occur earliest, and appear to be nearly identical for both slow notes
and fast notes. T-tests comparing these events find no significant difference for
either note speed. The movement of the hand is the result of rotations in the
Table 4. The means of all offset means and of all offset standard deviations for each
movement event. All times are in milliseconds.
Movement event Offset mean Offset standard deviation

Slow notes Fast notes Slow notes Fast notes
Hand hits 43.0 −3.03 35.94 33.97
Hand acceleration peaks −13.92 −32.9 31.34 25.69
Wrist hits 49.14 −3.29 40.86 32.33
Wrist acceleration peaks 0.45 −18.7 32.26 28.06
Elbow angle peaks 31.54 −9.35 36.95 29.05
Elbow angle acceleration peaks 2.84 −17.4 29.68 24.82
Wrist angle peaks 1.14 −10.53 38.86 34.28
Wrist angle acceleration peaks −12.99 −27.48 35.46 32.44
shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints, and possibly to a small degree, movements
of the trunk. This finding suggests that the last joint in the chain, the wrist,
contributes most to the acceleration of the hand.
The movement of the wrist location is primarily a result of the elbow angle,
and to a lesser degree the shoulder and trunk movements. Since it is earlier
in the kinematic chain, the wrist location is not affected by movements in the
wrist joint. Thus, it is not surprising to see that the timing appears to be nearly
identical for the acceleration peaks of the wrist location and those of the elbow
joint angle. This is true for both slow and fast notes. T-tests find no significant
differences between these two movement events at either note speed.
3.3 Analysis of Noise
There are two possible sources of variability in the timing of movement events.
One is due to people’s inability to execute their movements with precise timing.
The other is the noise or inaccuracy in the algorithms for detecting the movement
events. Events which can be performed and detected more reliably will be more
successful at generating the sound at the time intended by the performer. The
question then is, do some movement events have less noise than others?
Figure 7 shows box plots of the standard deviations for each movement event
for both slow and fast notes. We notice that for each pair of movement events,
the mean standard deviation for the acceleration peak event appears to be lower
than that for the associated change-of-direction event. A repeated measures two-
way ANOVA on the measured standard deviations finds a significant effect for
movement event (F = 3.541, p = 0.0029), but none for note speed. Table 5 shows
the results of post hoc t-tests comparing the change-of-direction and acceleration
peak events.
If we apply Bonferroni correction, only the first two results would be signifi-
cant. While it is not a strong result, it does seem that acceleration peaks events
16 L. Dahl
Offset standard deviation for slow notes Offset standard deviation for fast notes
0.06 0.06
Offset [seconds]
Offset [seconds]
0.04 0.04
0.02 0.02


Elbow angle peaks
Elbow angle peaks

Wrist angle peaks
Wrist angle peaks

Hand acc. peaks
Hand acc. peaks

Wrist acc. peaks
Wrist acc. peaks

Hand hits
Hand hits
Wrist hits
Wrist hits
Fig. 7. Box plots for each movement event of the offset time standard deviation for all
performers.
Table 5. The results of t-tests comparing the standard deviations of each change-of-
direction (c.o.d.) event and its related acceleration peak event. The 95 % confidence
interval is in milliseconds.
Movement event Result T(9) P 95 % CI

Slow notes
Hand position Acc. peaks have lower noise than c.o.d. 4.5366 0.0014 1.4 to 7.8
Wrist position Acc. peaks have lower noise than c.o.d. 3.8552 0.0039 3.6 to 13.7
Elbow joint angle Acc. peaks have lower noise than c.o.d. 2.8488 0.0191 1.5 to 13
Wrist joint angle No difference found n.s.
Fast notes
Hand position Acc. peaks have lower noise than c.o.d. 2.4022 0.0398 0.5 to 16.1
Wrist position Acc. peaks have lower noise than c.o.d. 2.5487 0.0313 0.5 to 8.1
Elbow joint angle Acc. peaks have lower noise than c.o.d. 2.7508 0.0224 0.8 to 7.7
Wrist joint angle No difference found n.s.
have less noise than change-of-direction events. And the difference is more promi-
nent for slow notes than for fast. As was found to be the case with offset means,
the wrist angle events are different: the standard deviations of wrist angle peaks
and wrist angle acceleration peaks were not found to differ for either note speed.
For both slow and fast notes, the two events with the lowest mean standard
deviations are hand acceleration peaks and elbow angle acceleration peaks.
4 Discussion
By summarizing the results presented above we begin to understand more about
discrete air-gestures, their timing, qualities, and which are likely to be most
useful in implementing real-time air-instruments.
4.1 Acceleration Peaks vs. Change of Direction
If a digital instrument builder wants to design a system to trigger sounds with

air-drumming gestures which movement event should they use? There are a
number of reasons why events based on acceleration peak are better.
Acceleration Peaks Occur Earlier. A real-time air-instrument needs to pre-

dict when an audio event should be triggered before it occurs, ideally early
enough to account for any latencies in the system. The acceleration peaks
for hand location, wrist location, and elbow angle occur before the change-of-
direction event for the same body part. On average the acceleration peaks of the
hand location occur earlier than any other movement event (14 msec before the
audio onset for slow notes and 33 msec before for fast notes), with wrist angle
acceleration peaks only slightly later (13 msec before the audio onset for slow
notes and 27 msec for fast notes). These events occur early enough that they
may be successfully implemented on some current real-time systems.
Finding that acceleration peaks tend to occur before the audio onset reminds
us of the sensorimotor synchronization research which shows that people tapping
in time to a metronome tend to tap before the beat. This lends support to the
hypothesis that the subjective movement event is an acceleration peak.
Acceleration Peaks Have Less Noise. For hand location, wrist location,
and elbow angle, the acceleration peak events had less timing variability than
their associated change-of-direction events. Hand acceleration peaks and elbow
angle acceleration peaks had the lowest noise.
This finding may seem surprising at first. The time at which the body part
changes direction is a result of the accelerations applied to it. Shouldn’t the
change-of-direction and acceleration peak events have similar noise character-
istics? The difference may simply be a result of the physics: acceleration is
integrated twice to give position, so small differences in acceleration result in
larger differences in position. Furthermore, we detect only the time of the peak
acceleration and do not measure the shape of the acceleration over time. Two
movements with identical peak acceleration time could have different acceler-
ation curves, leading to different change of direction times. Regardless of the
reason, the fact that acceleration peaks have less noise makes them better suited
for triggering sounds from discrete air-gestures.
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arrested the whole Russian movement. In the recent war between
Japan and Russia,[23] the Port Arthur fleet similarly threatened the
Japanese line of communications from Japan to Manchuria, and so
affected the whole conduct of the war. It was central, as regards
Japan and Liao-Yang, or Mukden. Study of such conditions
reinforces knowledge, by affording numerous illustrations of the
effect of position under very differing circumstances.
Let us now go back from the Danube with its Center, North, and
South, to the communications between the Spanish coast and the
Austrian army in Germany. Should the House of Austria in Spain
desire to send large reinforcements to the Danube, or to the Rhine,
by way of Italy, it can do so, provided it controls the sea; and
provided also that France has not shaken its hold upon North Italy.
Such a condition constitutes open and safe communications. If,
however, command of the sea is not assured, if the French navy, say
at Toulon, is equal to the Spanish navy in the neighborhood, there is
danger of a reverse; while if the French navy is superior locally, there
is great danger not merely of a reverse but of a serious disaster. In
such a case the French navy, or the port of Toulon, flanks the
Spanish line of communication; again an instance of position. As to
position, Toulon would correspond to Plevna and Port Arthur. This
instance illustrates, however, as Port Arthur conspicuously did, that
the value of a position is not in the bare position, but in the use you
make of it. This, it is pertinent to note, is just the value of anything a
man possesses, his brains or his fortune—the use he makes of either.
Should the French navy be decisively inferior locally to the Spanish,
Toulon loses its importance. As position it is still good, but it cannot
be used. It is an unavailable asset. So at Plevna, had the garrison
been so small that it could not take the field, the place either would
have been captured, or could have been watched by a detachment,
while the main Russian body moved on. At Port Arthur, the
inefficiency of the Russian navy permitted this course to the
Japanese. They watched the place by navy and army, and went on
with their march in Manchuria. Even so, the threat inherent in the
position compelled an immense detachment of troops necessary for
the siege, and so greatly weakened the main army in its action.
Note that it is the nearness of Toulon, as of Plevna, which
constitutes the menace to the line of communication; the line from
the port to that of the communications is thus an interior line, short,
enabling an attack by surprise, or in force. It is the same
consideration that has made Cadiz at one time, Gibraltar now, Malta,
Jamaica, Guantanamo Bay, all threatening positions; the ones to
vessels bound up or down the Mediterranean to or from Suez, the
others to vessels going to or from the Isthmus of Panama. If it had
been feasible for Spain to carry her reinforcements south of Sardinia
and thence north, Toulon would so far have lost much of this value.
As the line drew near Genoa, it would have regained control only in
some measure; that is, to a less degree and for a shorter time. As a
matter of fact such roundabout lines, fausses routes as Napoleon
called them, have played a notable part in the strategy of a weaker
party. The most convenient commercial route is not necessarily the
most significant to strategy. Napoleon, for example, when bound to
Egypt from Malta in 1798, did not go direct, but first sighted Crete
and then bore away for Egypt. Owing to this, Nelson in pursuit
missed the French because he naturally went direct.
The same beneficial effect—the same amount of protection as a
roundabout line would give—might have been obtained if the
Spanish navy on the Atlantic coast threatened French ports and
commerce, and thus induced France to keep her navy, in whole or in
part, in that quarter, weakening her Toulon force; so that, though
favorably situated, it was not strong enough to attack. This was
actually the case up to 1634, in which year the defeat of the allies of
France at Nordlingen, due to Spanish troops from Italy reinforcing
the Imperial armies in Germany, compelled France to declare open
war against Spain and to transfer her fleet to the Mediterranean.
This effect was produced also in 1898 on the United States; not by
the Spanish navy, which was innoxious in everything but talk, but by
the fears of the American people, which prompted the American
Government to keep the so-called Flying Squadron in Hampton
Roads, instead of close to the probable scene of war. Owing to this
distribution, if Cervera’s squadron had been efficient, it could have
got into Cienfuegos instead of Santiago; a very much harder nut to
crack, because in close railroad communication with Havana and
with the great mass of the Spanish army in Cuba. It is the same sort
of unintelligent fear which prompts the demand now to send half the
battle fleet to the Pacific. No course could be more entirely
satisfactory to an enemy, or more paralyzing to the United States
fleet, than just this. All or none; the battle fleet concentrated,
whether in the Pacific or the Atlantic.
You will remember that in the war with Spain the United States
navy had reproduced for it the situation I have depicted, of a
detachment trying to pass round the Danube from North to South.
The “Oregon” was the detachment, and she had to join the American
fleet in the West Indies, in spite of the Spanish squadron. She
reached Barbados May 18; the day before Cervera entered Santiago,
and six days after he left Martinique, which is only one hundred
miles from Barbados. The utter inefficiency of the Spanish navy has
caused us to lose sight of the risk to the “Oregon,” which was keenly
felt by her commander, and concerning which at the moment two
former secretaries of the navy expressed to me their anxiety. Despite
this experience, there are those now who would reconstitute it for us,
half the fleet in the Pacific and half in the Atlantic. Should then war
arise with a European state, or with Japan, it would be open to either
enemy to take the Danube position between our two divisions, as
Togo did between the Port Arthur and the Baltic squadrons....
Concentration
The general war against the House of Austria, as conducted by

Richelieu, appears to have suffered from the same cause that saps
the vigor of many wars; he attempted too many things at once,
instead of concentrating for decided superiority in some one or two
localities. For such concentration he had good opportunities, owing
to the central position and interior lines possessed by France. It was
open to him to act in great force either in Belgium, or on the Rhine,
or in Italy, or towards Spain. Moreover, he had the initial advantage
of a natural concentration: one nation against two, and those
separated in space. The proverbial weakness of alliances is due to
inferior power of concentration. Granting the same aggregate of
force, it is never as great in two hands as in one, because it is not
perfectly concentrated. Each party to an alliance usually has its
particular aim, which divides action. In any military scheme that
comes before you, let your first question to yourself be, Is this
consistent with the requirement of concentration? Never attempt to
straddle, to do two things at the same time, unless your force is
evidently so supreme that you have clearly more than enough for
each.
Our profession has never produced a man more daring in
enterprise, nor more skillful in management, than Nelson.
Remember, therefore, and always, that, when he sent off two frigates
on some expedition, he charged their captains:
“If you meet two enemies, do not each attack one. Combine both
on one of the enemy; you will make sure of that one, and you may
also get the other afterwards; but, whether the second escape or not,
your country will have won a victory, and gained a ship.”
The same consideration applies to ship design. You cannot have
everything. If you attempt it, you will lose everything; by which I
mean that in no one quality will your vessel be as efficient as if you
had concentrated purpose on that one. On a given tonnage,—which
in ship-building corresponds to a given size of army or of fleet,—
there cannot be had the highest speed, and the heaviest battery, and
the thickest armor, and the longest coal endurance, which the
tonnage would allow to any one of these objects by itself. If you try,
you will be repeating Richelieu’s mistake when he tried to carry on
offensive war on four frontiers.
The fighting order of navies still continues a line; which is called
more properly a column, because the ships are ranged one behind
the other. Nevertheless, if the arrangement of the guns, from van to
rear, is regarded, it will be seen that they really are deployed on a line
fronting the enemy. As a rule, in instructed naval warfare, attack has
been on one flank of that line. It is commonly spoken of as an attack
on van or rear, because of the columnar formation of the ships, but it
is really a flank attack; and, whichever flank is chosen, the attack on
the other is essentially refused, because the numbers devoted to it
are not sufficient to press an attack home. The culmination of the sail
era—Trafalgar—was fought exactly on these lines. Nelson
concentrated the bulk of his fleet, a superior force, on the left flank of
the enemy, which happened to be the rear; against the right flank he
sent a smaller number. He did not indeed give specific orders to the
smaller body not to attack, or to refuse themselves. That was not his
way. Moreover, he intended himself to take charge of this attack in
smaller force, and to be governed by circumstances as to the
development of it; but the result was shown in the fact that the larger
part of the enemy’s right flank escaped, and all probably would if
they had maneuvered well. The hostile loss fell on the other flank and
on the center; and not only was this the case in result, but also
Nelson in form and in his orders purposed just this. He put the
concentrated attack in the hands of his second; “I,” said he, in effect,
“will see that the other flank of the enemy does not interfere.”
Conditions modified his action; but that was his plan, and although,
from the particular conditions, he actually pierced the enemy’s
center, still, having done so, the subsequent attack fell upon the flank
originally intended, while the other flank was kept in check by the
rear ships of Nelson’s own division. These, as they advanced in
column, lay athwart the line by which the enemy’s van, if it tacked,
would approach the rear, or other flank; and they thus prevented its
approach by that route until too late to be effective.
Nelson, who was a thoughtful as well as a daring tactician,
expressed reasons for attacking one flank rather than another, under
differing conditions in which the fleets presented themselves; but,
speaking generally, the rear was the better to attack, because the van
could not, and cannot, come as soon to help the rear as the rear can
the van. It has to turn round, to begin with; and, before turning
round, its commander has to make up his mind, which few men do
quickly, unless they have reached conclusions beforehand. All this
means time. Besides, the assailant can more easily place himself in
the way of such new movement of the van, than he can of the rear
coming up on the line of advance it already has. Still, there are some
reasons in favor of the van. Nelson in 1801 said that in case of
encountering a Russian fleet he would attack the van; because injury
to it would throw the enemy’s order into confusion, from which the
Russians were not good enough maneuverers to recover. That is a
special reason, not a general. It takes account of a particular
circumstance, as a general on shore does of a particular locality.
When Farragut passed the Mobile forts his van was thrown into
confusion, and all know what a critical moment that was. It matters
little what the incident is, if the confusion is produced.
In the Battle of the Japan Sea the attack again was on a flank, and
that the van. Whether this was due to previous purpose of the
Japanese, or merely arose from the conditions as they presented
themselves, I do not know; but its tendency certainly would be to
cause confusion. I do not wish, however, to argue here a question of
tactics. My subject is strategy, and I am using tactics simply to
illustrate the predominance, everywhere, under all conditions and
from the nature of things, of the one great principle of concentration;
and that, too, in the specific method of so distributing your own force
as to be superior to the enemy in one quarter, while in the other you
hold him in check long enough to permit your main attack to reach
its full result. That necessary time may be half an hour on a field of
battle; in a campaign it may be days, weeks, perhaps more.
... In any frontier line, or any strategic front of operations, or any
line of battle, offensive effort may, and therefore should, be
concentrated in one part, not distributed along the whole. This
possibility, and a convenient way of conceiving it, Jomini expresses
in an aphorism which may be commended to memory, because it
sums up one important consideration concerning any military
disposition whatever; whether it be the strategic front of operations
in a campaign, or a tactical order of battle, or a frontier. Every such
situation, Jomini says, may be properly regarded as a line; and every
line divides, logically and actually, into three parts,—the center, and
the two extremes, or flanks.
Guard yourselves, of course, from imagining three equal parts. We
are not dealing here with mathematics, but with military
conceptions. For practical results, let us apply at once to the United
States of to-day. The United States has a long ocean frontier, broken
at Mexico by the interposition of land, as the French maritime
frontier is broken at the Pyrenees; yet the coast lines, like the French,
possess a certain maritime continuity, in that ships can pass from
end to end by sea. In such cases, it may be said without exaggeration
that an ocean frontier is continuous. At present, the United States
has one frontier which is strictly continuous, by land as by water,
from the coast of Maine to the Rio Grande. There are in it, by natural
division, three principal parts: the Atlantic, the Gulf, and the Straits
of Florida. I do not deny that for purposes of study further
convenient subdivisions may be made; but it may fairly be claimed
that these three are clear, are primary, and are principal. They are
very unequal in length, and, from the military standpoint, in
importance; for while the peninsula of Florida does not rank very
high in the industrial interests of the nation, a superior hostile fleet
securely based in the Straits of Florida could effectively control
intercourse by water between the two flanks. It would possess central
position; and in virtue of that central position, its superiority need
not be over the whole United States navy, should that be divided on
each side of the central position. The supposed enemy, in such
position, would need only to be decisively superior to each of the
divisions lying on either side; whereas, were they united, superiority
would require to be over the whole. It was this condition which made
Cuba for the first century of our national existence a consideration of
the first importance in our International relations. It flanked
national communications, commercial and military. We know that
there exists in our country an element of wisdom which would treat
such a situation, which geography has constituted for us, as two boys
do an apple. This would divide the fleet between the two coasts, and
call it fair to both; because, so it is reasoned,—or rather argued,—
defending both. It certainly, however, would not be concentration,
nor effective.
Before passing on, note the striking resemblance between the
Florida peninsula and that of Korea. Togo, at Masampo, was to
Rozhestvensky and the Russians at Vladivostok just as a hostile fleet
in the Straits of Florida would be to American divisions in the Gulf
and at Hampton Roads. In like manner at an earlier period Togo and
Kamimura, working apart but on interior lines, separated the three
fine fighting ships in Vladivostok from the Port Arthur division.
The United States, however, has an even more urgent situation as
to frontier in its Atlantic and Pacific coasts. If my claim is correct, in
the instance of France, that a water frontier is continuous when
passage from end to end by water is practicable, this is also
continuous; and the battle fleet has demonstrated the fact within the
past few years. The United States, then, has a maritime frontier line
from Eastport, Maine, to Puget Sound; and, like other military lines,
it divides into three principal parts immediately obvious,—the
Atlantic Coast, the Pacific Coast, and the line between. This summary
will not be any more true, nor any more useful for reflection, when
the line passes by Panama instead of the Straits of Magellan; but it
certainly will be more obvious. It then will be seen easily, as now may
be seen certainly, that the important part of the long line in the
present case, as in the future, is the center, because that insures or
prevents passage in force from side to side; the transfer of force; in
short, the communications. This reproduces again the Danube
position, and also the chain of Spanish positions from Genoa to
Belgium. It is once more the central position, which we have met
before in such varying localities and periods; but the central position
of Panama has over that now open to us, by Magellan, the advantage
of interior lines, of which class of lines indeed the contrast between
the existing and the future of routes offers a notable illustration.
6. Strategic Positions[24]
The strategic value of any place depends upon three principal

conditions:
1. Its position, or more exactly its situation. A place may have great
strength, but be so situated with regard to the strategic lines as not to
be worth occupying.
2. Its military strength, offensive and defensive. A place may be
well situated and have large resources and yet possess little strategic
value, because weak. It may, on the other hand, while not naturally
strong, be given artificial strength for defense. The word “fortify”
means simply to make strong.
3. The resources, of the place itself and of the surrounding
country....
Where all three conditions, situation, intrinsic strength, and
abundant resources, are found in the same place, it becomes of great
consequence strategically and may be of the very first importance,
though not always. For it must be remarked that there are other
considerations, lesser in the purely military point of view, which
enhance the consequence of a seaport even strategically; such as its
being a great mart of trade, a blow to which would cripple the
prosperity of the country; or the capital, the fall of which has a
political effect additional to its importance otherwise.
I. Situation
Of the three principal conditions, the first, situation, is the most

indispensable; because strength and resources can be artificially
supplied or increased, but it passes the power of man to change the
situation of a port which lies outside the limits of strategic effect.
Generally, value of situation depends upon nearness to a sea route;
to those lines of trade which, when drawn upon the ocean common,
are as imaginary as the parallels of the chart, yet as really and
usefully exist. If the position be on two routes at the same time, that
is, near the crossing, the value is enhanced. A cross-roads is
essentially a central position, facilitating action in as many directions
as there are roads. Those familiar with works on the art of land war
will recognize the analogies. The value becomes yet more marked if,
by the lay of the land, the road to be followed becomes very narrow;
as at the Straits of Gibraltar, the English Channel, and in a less
degree the Florida Strait. Perhaps narrowing should be applied to
every inlet of the sea, by which trade enters into and is distributed
over a great extent of country; such as the mouth of the Mississippi,
of the Dutch and German rivers, New York harbor, etc. As regards
the sea, however, harbors or the mouths of rivers are usually termini
or entrepôts, at which goods are transshipped before going farther. If
the road be narrowed to a mere canal, or to the mouth of a river, the
point to which vessels must come is reduced almost to the
geometrical definition of a point and near-by positions have great
command. Suez presents this condition now, and Panama soon will.
Analogously, positions in narrow seas are more important than
those in the great ocean, because it is less possible to avoid them by a
circuit. If these seas are not merely the ends—“termini”—of travel
but “highways,” parts of a continuous route; that is, if commerce not
only comes to them but passes through to other fields beyond, the
number of passing ships is increased and thereby the strategic value
of the controlling points....
[Illustrations are here employed to show that, owing to the
freedom of movements on the open sea, dangerous positions when
not located in narrow channels are more easily avoided than on land.
Hence “fausses routes et moments perdus,” in Napoleon’s phrase,
play an important part in naval operations, as shown by Napoleon’s
route to Egypt via Malta and Crete, and Rozhestvensky’s choice of
routes before Tsushima. On the other hand, obstacles when they
exist are impassable. Only submarines can avoid danger by transit
over land.—Editor.]
II. Military Strength
A. Defensive Strength. [Military strength is considered in two

aspects, (A) defensive, and (B) offensive. Under defensive strength, it
is first pointed out that, as illustrated by Port Arthur and Santiago,
coast bases are in chief danger of capture from the land side. While it
is the business of the navy to prevent the landing of forces, its
operations, though defensive in result, must be offensive in
character, and not confined to the vicinity of the bases.—Editor.]
In the sphere of maritime war, the navy represents the army in the
field; and the fortified strategic harbors, upon which it falls back as
ports of refuge after battle or defeat, for repairs or for supplies,
correspond precisely to strongholds, like Metz, Strasburg, Ulm, upon
which, systematically occupied with reference to the strategic
character of the theater of war, military writers agree the defense of a
country must be founded. The foundation, however, must not be
taken for the superstructure for which it exists. In war, the defensive
exists mainly that the offensive may act more freely. In sea warfare,
the offensive is assigned to the navy; and if the latter assumes to
itself the defensive, it simply locks up a part of its trained men in
garrisons, which could be filled as well by forces that have not their
peculiar skill. To this main proposition I must add a corollary, that if
the defense of ports, many in number, be attributed to the navy,
experience shows that the navy will be subdivided among them to an
extent that will paralyze its efficiency. I was amused, but at the same
time instructed as to popular understanding of war, by the
consternation aroused in Great Britain by one summer’s maneuvers,
already alluded to, and the remedy proposed in some papers. It
appeared that several seaports were open to bombardment and
consequent exaction of subsidies by a small squadron, and it was
gravely urged that the navy should be large enough to spare a small
detachment to each port. Of what use is a navy, if it is to be thus
whittled away? But a popular outcry will drown the voice of military
experience.
... The strictly defensive strength of a seaport depends therefore
upon permanent works, the provision of which is not the business of
naval officers. The navy is interested in them because, when
effective, they release it from any care about the port; from defensive
action to the offensive, which is its proper sphere.
There is another sense in which a navy is regarded as defensive;
namely, that the existence of an adequate navy protects from
invasion by commanding the sea. That is measurably and in very
large degree true, and is a strategic function of great importance; but
this is a wholly different question from that of the defensive strength
of seaports, of strategic points, with which we are now dealing. It
therefore will be postponed, with a simple warning against the
opinion that because the navy thus defends there is no need for local
protection of the strategic ports; no need, that is, for fortifications.
This view affirms that a military force can always, under all
circumstances, dispense with secure bases of operations; in other
words, that it can never be evaded, nor know momentary mishap.
I have now put before you reasons for rejecting the opinion that
the navy is the proper instrument, generally speaking, for coast
defense in the narrow sense of the expression, which limits it to the
defense of ports. The reasons given may be summed up, and reduced
to four principles, as follows:
1. That for the same amount of offensive power, floating batteries,
or vessels of very little mobility, are less strong defensively against
naval attack than land works are.
2. That by employing able-bodied seafaring men to defend harbors
you lock up offensive strength in an inferior, that is, in a defensive,
effort.
3. That it is injurious to the morale and skill of seamen to keep
them thus on the defensive and off the sea. This has received
abundant historical proof in the past.
4. That in giving up the offensive the navy gives up its proper
sphere, which is also the most effective.
B. Offensive Strength.—The offensive strength of a seaport,
considered independently of its strategic situation and of its natural
and acquired resources, consists in its capacity:
1. To assemble and hold a large military force, of both ships of war
and transports.
2. To launch such force safely and easily into the deep.
3. To follow it with a continued support until the campaign is
ended. In such support are always to be reckoned facilities for
docking, as the most important of all supports.
[These points are discussed in detail. It is noted that a port with
two outlets, like New York and Vladivostok, has a decided advantage.
—Editor.]
III. Resources
The wants of a navy are so many and so varied that it would be

time lost to name them separately. The resources which meet them
may be usefully divided under two heads, natural and artificial. The
latter, again, may be conveniently and accurately subdivided into
resources developed by man in his peaceful occupation and use of a
country, and those which are immediately and solely created for the
maintenance of war.
Other things being equal, the most favorable condition is that
where great natural resources, joined to a good position for trade,
have drawn men to settle and develop the neighboring country.
Where the existing resources are purely artificial and for war, the
value of the port, in so far, is inferior to that of one where the
ordinary occupations of the people supply the necessary resources.
To use the phraseology of our subject, a seaport that has good
strategic situation and great military strength, but to which all
resources must be brought from a distance, is much inferior to a
similar port having a rich and developed friendly region behind it.
Gibraltar and ports on small islands, like Santa Lucia and
Martinique, labor under this disadvantage, as compared with ports
of England, France, the United States; or even of a big island like
Cuba, if the latter be developed by an industrial and commercial
people.
7. Strategic Lines[25]
Communications
The most important of strategic lines are those which concern the
communications. Communications dominate war. This has peculiar
force on shore, because an army is immediately dependent upon
supplies frequently renewed. It can endure a brief interruption much
less readily than a fleet can, because ships carry the substance of
communications largely in their own bottoms. So long as the fleet is
able to face the enemy at sea, communications mean essentially, not
geographical lines, like the roads an army has to follow, but those
necessaries, supplies of which the ships cannot carry in their own
hulls beyond a limited amount. These are, first, fuel; second,
ammunition; last of all, food. These necessaries, owing to the facility
of water transportation as compared with land, can accompany the
movements of a fleet in a way impossible to the train of an army. An
army train follows rather than accompanies, by roads which may be
difficult and must be narrow; whereas maritime roads are easy, and
inimitably wide.
Nevertheless, all military organizations, land or sea, are ultimately
dependent upon open communications with the basis of the national
power; and the line of communications is doubly of value, because it
usually represents also the line of retreat. Retreat is the extreme
expression of dependence upon the home base. In the matter of
communications, free supplies and open retreat are two essentials to
the safety of an army or of a fleet. Napoleon at Marengo in 1800, and
again at Ulm in 1805, succeeded in placing himself upon the
Austrian line of communication and of retreat, in force sufficient to
prevent supplies coming forward from the base, or the army moving
backward to the base. At Marengo there was a battle, at Ulm none;
but at each the results depended upon the same condition,—the line
of communication controlled by the enemy. In the War of Secession
the forts of the Mississippi were conquered as soon as Farragut’s
fleet, by passing above, held their line of communications. Mantua in
1796 was similarly conquered as soon as Napoleon had placed
himself upon the line of retreat of its garrison. It held out for six
months, very properly; but the rest of the campaign was simply an
effort of the outside Austrians to drive the French off the line, and
thus to reinforce the garrison or to enable it to retreat.
Importance of Sea Communications[26]
Except Russia and Japan, the nations actively concerned in this

great problem [the problem of Asia] rest, for home bases, upon
remote countries. We find therefore two classes of powers: those
whose communication is by land, and those who depend upon the
sea. The sea lines are the most numerous and easy, and they will
probably be determinative of the courses of trade. Among them there
are two the advantages of which excel all others—for Europe by Suez,
from America by way of the Pacific Ocean. The latter will doubtless
receive further modification by an isthmian canal, extending the use
of the route to the Atlantic seaboard of America, North and South.
Communications dominate war; broadly considered, they are the
most important single element in strategy, political or military. In its
control over them has lain the pre-eminence of sea power—as an
influence upon the history of the past; and in this it will continue, for
the attribute is inseparable from its existence. This is evident
because, for reasons previously explained, transit in large quantities
and for great distances is decisively more easy and copious by water
than by land. The sea, therefore, is the great medium of
communications—of commerce. The very sound, “commerce,” brings
with it a suggestion of the sea, for it is maritime commerce that has
in all ages been most fruitful of wealth; and wealth is but the
concrete expression of a nation’s energy of life, material and mental.
The power, therefore, to insure these communications to one’s self,
and to interrupt them for an adversary, affects the very root of a
nation’s vigor, as in military operations it does the existence of an
army, or as the free access to rain and sun—communication from
without—does the life of a plant. This is the prerogative of the sea
powers; and this chiefly—if not, indeed, this alone—they have to set
off against the disadvantage of position and of numbers under which,
with reference to land power, they labor in Asia. It is enough.
Pressure afar off—diversion—is adequate to relieve that near at hand,
as Napoleon expected to conquer Pondicherry on the banks of the
Vistula. But if the sea powers embrace the proposition that has found
favor in America, and, by the concession of immunity to an enemy’s
commerce in time of war, surrender their control of maritime
communications, they will have abdicated the scepter of the sea, for
they will have abandoned one chief means by which pressure in one
quarter—the sea—balances pressure in a remote and otherwise
inaccessible quarter. Never was moment for such abandonment less
propitious than the present, when the determination of influence in
Asia is at stake.
8. Offensive Operations[27]
[The situation here considered is that of a fleet that has driven the
enemy from a base in the theater of war, but has still to cope with the
enemy fleet falling back on another base.—Editor.]
The case of further advance from your new base may not be
complicated by the consideration of great distance. The next step
requisite to be taken may be short, as from Cuba to Jamaica; or it
may be that the enemy’s fleet is still at sea, in which case it is the
great objective, now as always. Its being at sea may be because
retreating, from the position you have occupied, towards his remoter
base; either because conscious of inferiority, or, perhaps, after a
defeat more or less decisive. It will then be necessary to act with
rapidity, in order to cut off the enemy from his port of destination. If
there is reason to believe that you can overtake and pass him with
superior force, every effort to do so must be made. The direction of
his retreat is known or must be ascertained, and it will be borne in
mind that the base to which he is retreating and his fleet are
separated parts of one force, the union of which must be prevented.
In such a case, the excuses frequently made for a sluggish pursuit
ashore, such as fatigue of troops, heavy roads, etc., do not apply.
Crippled battleships must be dropped, or ordered to follow with the
colliers. Such a pursuit presumes but one disadvantage to the
chasing fleet, viz., that it is leaving its coal base while the chase is
approaching his; and this, if the calculations are close, may give the
pursuing admiral great anxiety. Such anxieties are the test and
penalty of greatness. In such cases, excuses for failure attributed to
shortness of coal will be closely scrutinized; and justly. In all other
respects, superiority must be assumed, because on no other
condition could such headlong pursuit be made. It aims at a great
success, and successes will usually be in proportion to superiority,
either original or acquired. “What the country needs,” said Nelson,
“is the annihilation of the enemy. Only numbers can annihilate.”
If such a chase follow a battle, it can scarcely fail that the weaker
party—the retreating party—is also distressed by crippled ships,
which he may be forced to abandon—or fight. Strenuous, unrelaxing
pursuit is therefore as imperative after a battle as is courage during
it. Great political results often flow from correct military action; a
fact which no military commander is at liberty to ignore. He may
very well not know of those results; it is enough to know that they
may happen, and nothing can excuse his losing a point which by
exertion he might have scored. Napoleon, says Jomini, never forgave
the general who in 1796, by resting his troops a couple of hours,
failed to get between an Austrian division and Mantua, in which it
was seeking refuge, and by his neglect found it. The failure of
Admiral de Tourville to pursue vigorously the defeated Dutch and
English fleet, after the battle of Beachy Head, in 1690, caused that
victory to be indecisive, and helped to fasten the crown of England
on the head of a Dutch King, who was the soul of the alliance against
France. Slackness in following up victory had thus a decisive
influence upon the results of the whole war, both on the continent
and the sea. I may add, it has proved injurious to the art of naval
strategy, by the seeming confirmation it has given to the theory of
the “fleet in being.” It was not the beaten and crippled English and
Dutch “fleet in being” that prevented an invasion of England. It was
the weakness or inertness of Tourville, or the unreadiness of the
French transports.
Similarly, the refusal of Admiral Hotham to pursue vigorously a
beaten French fleet in 1795, unquestionably not only made that
year’s campaign indecisive, but made possible Napoleon’s Italian
campaign of 1796, from which flowed his whole career and its effects
upon history. The same dazzling career received its sudden mortal
stab when, in the height of his crushing advance in Spain, with its
capital in his hands, at the very moment when his vast plans seemed
on the eve of accomplishment, a more enterprising British leader, Sir
John Moore, moved his petty army to Sahagun, on the flank of
Napoleon’s communications between France and Madrid. The blow
recoiled upon Moore, who was swept as by a whirlwind to Coruña,
and into the sea; but Spain was saved. The Emperor could not
retrieve the lost time and opportunity. He could not return to Madrid
in person, but had to entrust to several subordinates the task which
only his own supreme genius could successfully supervise. From the
military standpoint, his downfall dates from that day. The whole
career of Wellington, to Waterloo, lay in the womb of Moore’s daring
conception. But for that, wrote Napier, the Peninsular War would not
have required a chronicler.
An admiral may not be able to foresee such remote consequences
of his action, but he can safely adopt the principle expressed by
Nelson, in the instance just cited, after hearing his commander-in-
chief say they had done well enough: “If ten ships out of eleven were
taken, I would never call it well enough, if we were able to get at the
eleventh.”
The relations between the fleets of Admirals Rozhestvensky and
Togo prior to their meeting off Tsushima bore no slight resemblance
to those between a pursued and a pursuing fleet. The Russian fleet,
which had started before the Port Arthur division succumbed, was
placed by that event in the position of a fleet which has suffered
defeat so severe that its first effort must be to escape into its own
ports. This was so obvious that many felt a retreat upon the Baltic
was the only course left open; but, failing that, Rozhestvensky argued
that he should rush on to Vladivostok at once, before the Japanese
should get again into the best condition to intercept him, by
repairing their ships, cleaning the bottoms, and refreshing the ships’
companies. Instead of so ordering, the Russian government decided
to hold him at Nossi-Bé (the north end of Madagascar), pending a
reinforcement to be sent under Admiral Nebogatoff. Something is to
be said for both views, in the abstract; but considering that the
reinforcement was heterogeneous and inferior in character, that the
Russian first aim was not battle but escape to Vladivostok, and,
especially, that the Japanese were particularly anxious to obtain the
use of delay for the very purpose Rozhestvensky feared, it seems
probable that he was right. In any event, he was delayed at Nossi-Bé
from January 9 to March 16; and afterwards at Kamranh Bay in
French Cochin-China, from April 14 to May 9, when Nebogatoff
joined. Allowing time for coaling and refitting, this indicates a delay
of sixty to seventy days; the actual time underway from Nossi-Bé to
Tsushima being only forty-five days. Thus, but for the wait for
Nebogatoff, the Russian division would have reached Tsushima two
months before it did, or about March 20.
Togo did not have to get ahead of a flying fleet, for by the fortune
of position he was already ahead of it; but he did have to select the
best position for intercepting it, as well as to decide upon his general
course of action: whether, for instance, he should advance to meet it;
whether he should attempt embarrassment by his superior force of
torpedo vessels, so as to cripple or destroy some of its units, thus
reducing further a force already inferior; also the direction and
activities of his available scouts. His action may be taken as
expressing his opinions on these subjects. He did not advance; he did
not attempt harassment prior to meeting; he concentrated his entire
battle force on the line by which he expected the enemy must
advance; and he was so far in ignorance of their movements that he
received information only on the very morning of the battle. This was
well enough; but it is scarcely unreasonable to say it might have been
bettered. The Japanese, however, had behind them a large part of a
successful naval campaign, the chief points of which it is relevant to
our subject to note. They had first by a surprise attack inflicted a
marked injury on the enemy’s fleet, which obtained for them a time
of delay and opportunity during its enforced inactivity. They had
then reduced one of the enemy’s two naval bases, and destroyed the
division sheltered in it. By this they had begun to beat the enemy in
detail, and had left the approaching reinforcement only one possible
port of arrival.
If a flying fleet has been lost to sight and has but one port of
refuge, pursuit, of course, will be directed upon that port; but if there
are more, the chasing admiral will have to decide upon what point to
direct his fleet, and will send out despatch vessels in different
directions to find the enemy and transmit intelligence. Cruisers
engaged in such duty should be notified of the intended or possible
movements of the fleet, and when practicable should be sent in
couples; for although wireless telegraphy has now superseded the
necessity of sending one back with information, while the other
remains in touch with the enemy, accidents may happen, and in so
important a matter it seems expedient to double precautions. The
case resembles duplicating important correspondence; for wireless
cannot act before it has news, and to obtain news objects must be
seen. It is to be remembered, too, that wireless messages may be
intercepted, to the serious disadvantage of the sender. It seems
possible that conjunctures may arise when it will be safer to send a
vessel with tidings rather than commit them to air waves.
Thus, in theory, and to make execution perfect,—to capture, so to
say, Nelson’s eleventh ship,—the aim must be to drive the enemy out
of every foothold in the whole theater of war, and particularly to

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Full Chapter Music Mind and Embodiment 11Th International Symposium CMMR 2015 Plymouth Uk June 16 19 2015 Revised Selected Papers 1St Edition Richard Kronland Martinet PDF

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Music Mind and Embodiment 11th

International Symposium CMMR 2015

Big Data Benchmarking 6th International Workshop WBDB

Information and Communication Technologies in Education

Sound Music and Motion 10th International Symposium

Music Technology with Swing 13th International

Distributed Computer and Communication Networks 18th

Trustworthy Global Computing 10th International

Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Systems 7th

Graphic Recognition Current Trends and Challenges 11th

Sølvi Ystad (Eds.)

ISSN 0302-9743 ISSN 1611-3349 (electronic)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016951652

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

The 11th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research,

June 2016 Richard Kronland-Martinet

The 11th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research

Paper, Program, and Proceedings Chairs

Local Organizing Committee

Frédéric Bevilacqua IRCAM, France

Darryl Cameron Sven-Amin Lembke Etienne Thoret

Sound, Motion and Gesture

Comparing the Timing of Movement Events for Air-Drumming Gestures. . . . 3

Assessing the Influence of Constraints on Cellists’ Postural Displacements

Musical Meter, Rhythm and the Moving Body: Designing Methods

Evaluating Input Devices for Dance Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Estimation of Guitar Fingering and Plucking Controls Based on Multimodal

Analysis of Mimed Violin Performance Movements of Neophytes: Patterns,

Digital Musical Instruments, Embodiment and Performance

Skill Development and Stabilisation of Expertise for Electronic

The Hybrid Brain Computer Music Interface - Integrating Brainwave

Feeling Sound: Exploring a Haptic-Audio Relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

BOEUF: A Unified Framework for Modeling and Designing

Decomposing a Composition: On the Multi-layered Analysis of Expressive

3CMS: An Interactive Decision System for Live Performance . . . . . . . . . . . 190

A Viewpoint Approach to Symbolic Music Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Balancing Audio: Towards a Cognitive Structure of Sound Interaction

Conchord: An Application for Generating Musical Harmony by Navigating

Musical Variation and Improvisation Based on Multi-resolution

Music with Unconventional Computing: Granular Synthesis

Data Mining, Music Information Retrieval and Artificial Intelligence

Evaluation and Prediction of Harmonic Complexity Across 76 Years

Information Rate for Fast Time-Domain Instrument Classification . . . . . . . . . 297

Escaping from the Abyss of Manual Annotation: New Methodology

The Clustering of Expressive Timing Within a Phrase in Classical Piano

Modeling Affective Responses to Music Using Audio Signal Analysis

A New Look at Musical Expectancy: The Veridical Versus the General

Music Analysis, Music Generation and Emotion

Emotional Experiences of Ascending Melodic Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373

rGTTM III: Learning-Based Time-Span Tree Generator Based on PCFG. . . . 387

BioComputer Music: Generating Musical Responses with Physarum

‘Understood at Last’?: A Memetic Analysis of Beethoven’s ‘Bloody Fist’ . . . 420

Music and Dementia: Two Case-Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438

Strictly Rhythm: Exploring the Effects of Identical Regions and Meter

Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Unconstrained Body Responses

Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483

Department of Music, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA

Abstract. New air-instruments allow us to control sound by moving

Keywords: Gesture · Musical gesture · Air-instruments · Air-

1.1 The Challenges of Designing Air-Instruments

A Subjective Movement Event. The work in this paper is based on the