This thesis collects a series of works that engage with Swedish folk music, dance, theory and practice. The studies provide insights into the articulation of rhythm and meter in a local style of the Swedish polska and the interactions between such elements in music and dance performances. The studies exemplify a novel combination of diverse methodologies, including music and dance performance data analysis, design methods, and artistic methods in support of practice-led investigations conducted in close collaboration with the involved dancers. A preliminary concept for accessible sonification of motion captured folk dance is presented, focusing on contextually informed selections of movement parameters. This mediation of movement data through sonification plays a central role in exploring music theory concepts by applying them in artistic practice. The results illustrate the multidimensional character of sound and movement interactions within the local polska type. In addition, artistic works are presented that transcend the participatory performance context of polska dance and explore new artistic potential in the practice of playing for dancing in Swedish folk.

Denna avhandling samlar en serie studier som berör svensk folkmusik och dans i teori och praktik. Studierna ger insikter i artikulationen av rytm och meter i en lokal stil av svensk polska samt om dessa element i samspelet mellan musik och dans. Studierna exemplifierar en ny kombination av olika metoder, inklusive dataanalys av musik- och dansframföranden, designmetoder och konstnärliga metoder till stöd för praktikledda undersökningar utförda i nära samarbete med de inblandade dansarna. Avhandlingen presenterar ett preliminärt koncept för tillgänglig sonifiering av rörelsedata från folkdans, med fokus på kontextuellt informerade urval av rörelseparametrar. Mediering av rörelsedata genom sonifiering spelar en central roll för att utforska musikteoretiska begrepp genom tillämpningar i konstnärlig praktik. Resultaten illustrerar den flerdimensionella karaktären av ljud och rörelseinteraktioner inom den specifika polsketypen. Dessutom presenteras konstnärliga verk som går utöver polskans sociala framförandekontext och utforskar nya uttrycksmöjligheter inom praktiken att spela till dans i svensk folkmusik.

This study presents a sonification tool – SonifyFOLK –designed for intuitive access by musicians and dancers in their sonic explorations of movements in dance performances. It is implemented as a web-based application to facilitate accessible audio parameter mapping of movement data for non-experts, and applied and evaluated with Swedish folk musicians and dancers in their exploration of sonifying dance. SonifyFOLK is based on the WebAudioXML Sonification Toolkit and is designed within a group of artists and engineers using artistic goals as drivers for the sound design. The design addresses challenges of providing an accessible interface for mapping movement data to audio parameters, managing multi-dimensional data and creating audio mapping templates for a contextually grounded sound design. The evaluation documents a diversity of sonification outcomes, reflections by participants that imply curiosity for further work on sonification, as well as the importance of the immediacy of the both visual and acoustic feedback of parameter choices. 

Some triple-beat forms in Scandinavian Folk Music are characterized by non-isochronous beat durations: asymmetric beats. Theorists of folk music have suggested that the variability of rhythmic figures and asymmetric metre are fundamental to these forms. The aim of this study is to obtain a deeper understanding of the relationship between melodic structure and asymmetric metre by analysing semi-automatically annotated performances. Our study considers archive and contemporary recordings of fiddlers' different versions of the same musical pieces: polska tunes in a local Swedish tradition. Results show that asymmetric beat patterns are consistent between performances and that they correspond with structural features of rhythmic figures, such as the note density within beats. The present study goes beyond previous work by exploring the use of a state-of-the-art automatic music notation tool in a corpus study of Swedish traditional music, and by employing statistical methods for a comparative analysis of performances across different players. 

Synchronization of movement to music is a behavioural capacity that separates humans from most other species. Whereas such movements have been studied using a wide range of methods, only few studies have investigated synchronisation to real music stimuli in a cross-culturally comparative setting. The present study employs beat tracking evaluation metrics and accent histograms to analyze the differences in the ways participants from two cultural groups synchronize their tapping with either familiar or unfamiliar music stimuli. Instead of choosing two apparently remote cultural groups, we selected two groups of musicians that share cultural backgrounds, but that differ regarding the music style they specialize in. The employed method to record tapping responses in audio format facilitates a fine-grained analysis of metrical accents that emerge from the responses. The identified differences between groups are related to the metrical structures inherent to the two musical styles, such as non-isochronicity of the beat, and differences between the groups document the influence of the deep enculturation of participants to their style of expertise. Besides these findings, our study sheds light on a conceptual weakness of a common beat tracking evaluation metric, when applied to human tapping instead of machine generated beat estimations.

Synchronization of movement to music is a behavioural capacity that separates humans from most other species. Whereas such movements have been studied using a wide range of methods, only few studies have investigated synchronisation to real music stimuli in a cross-culturally comparative setting. The present study employs beat tracking evaluation metrics and accent histograms to analyze the differences in the ways participants from two cultural groups synchronize their tapping with either familiar or unfamiliar music stimuli. Instead of choosing two apparently remote cultural groups, we selected two groups of musicians that share cultural backgrounds, but that differ regarding the music style they specialize in. The employed method to record tapping responses in audio format facilitates a fine-grained analysis of metrical accents that emerge from the responses. The identified differences between groups are related to the metrical structures inherent to the two musical styles, such as non-isochronicity of the beat, and differences between the groups document the influence of the deep enculturation of participants to their style of expertise. Besides these findings, our study sheds light on a conceptual weakness of a common beat tracking evaluation metric, when applied to human tapping instead of machine generated beat estimations.

The link between musicians and dancers is generally described as strong in many traditional musics and this holds also for Scandinavian Folk Music - spelmansmusik. Understanding the interaction of music and dance has potential for developing theories of performance strategies in artistic practice and for developing interactive systems. In this paper we investigate this link by having Swedish folk musicians perform to animations generated from motion capture recordings of dancers. The different stimuli focus on motions of selected body parts as moving white dots on a computer screen with the aim to understand how different movements can provide reliable cues for musicians. Sound recordings of fiddlers playing to the "dancing dot" were analyzed using automatic alignment to the original music performance related to the dance recordings. Interviews were conducted with musicians and comments were collected in order to shed light on strategies when playing for dancing. Results illustrate a reliable alignment to renderings showing full skeletons of dancers, and an advantage of focused displays of movements in the upper back of the dancer.

To engage students in and beyond course activities has been a working practice both at KTH Sound and Music Computing group and at KMH Royal College of Music since many years. This paper collects experiences of involving students in research conducted within the two institutions. 

We describe how students attending our courses are given the possibility to be involved in our research activities, and we argue that their involvement both contributes to develop new research and benefits the students in the short and long term.  Among the assignments, activities, and tasks we offer in our education programs are pilot experiments, prototype development, public exhibitions, performing, composing, data collection, analysis challenges, and bachelor and master thesis projects that lead to academic publications.

The interrelation of playing and dancing is central for understanding performance practice in Swedish folk music, as it plays an important role for the metric and rhythmic qualities of spelmansmusik, and playing for dancing is considered a key competence for musicians in this tradition. As part of a research project into performance practice, sound, video and motion capture (MoCap) data were recorded from live performances of three musicians and two dancers in different combinations. In addition, dancing to two recordings by an influential musician and to live and pre-recorded beat clapping was recorded. This paper incorporates measurements and visualizations of performance data in combination with performer participation and interviews. As a starting point for our project, we focus on metric qualities in a historical recording, and on the dance movement patterns to a Swedish polska style with asymmetrical beat patterns. For this paper - as a preliminary investigation into the material - the recordings of one dancer dancing to an isochronous clapped beat, and to a recording by an influential player have been used for comparison of a central movement pattern in dancing. The findings show that asymmetric beat patterns contained in the recording cause wider variation among the movement patterns when compared to the patterns observed to isochronous clapping. Considering the performers reactions towards using MoCap as a tool for viewing and discussing their performances, we propose further investigations by combining scientific, ethnomusicological and artistic research methods into the research of performance practice in folk music.

This exposition delves into the outcomes of a collaborative research project involving a group of Swedish folk musicians and dancers. The project employs optical motion capture (Mocap) as a tool to explore collective performance and create innovative artistic expressions by merging traditional practices with contemporary media technologies. As a musician engaged with dancers, the author investigates ways to mediate dance through the sonification and visualisation of Mocap data. The focus is on the fundamental connection between sound and movement in this performance practice, particularly showcased in the project's centrepiece, "Dancing Dots." This performance combines live music and dance with sonic and visual displays derived from Mocap studio recordings. The exposition also applies music and dance theoretical concepts in designing movement sonification, examining their relevance in an artistic context. The use of optical motion capture is contextualised as a means to convey actions through narrow streams of movement data, challenging traditional notions of performance interaction. The exposition introduces the tool SonifyFOLK for accessible sonification of folk-dance movement data, and the methods and results are grounded in a practice-based understanding of the rhythmic/metric framework of the Swedish Polska. The ultimate goal is to develop new avenues for artistic expression in Swedish folk music and dance by introducing novel interfaces between music and dance, thereby creating an immersive visual/sonic landscape that extends the traditional art form into new performance contexts.