Vincent Verfaille

Research / Teaching positions

Research projects

  • Jan. 2006–July 2009: Control of Natural and Synthetic Sounds (Consonnes)
    • place: SPCL & IDMIL / CIRMMT, McGill University (Montreal, Qc, Canada)
    • funding: MDEIE PSR-SIIRI (Québec) & ANR (France)
    • research topics:
      • indirect acquisition of harmonic notes producing gestures on the flute
      • comparison of direct and indirect acquisition of gestures (case of flute, with Benoît Fabre and Thierry Voinier)
      • indirect acquisition of vowels used by flutists to change timbre (with Caroline Traube)
      • vibrato study for wind, wood, brass and string instruments; development and perceptual evaluation of a high-level signal processing vibrato model, accounting for modulations of amplitude, frequency and spectral envelope (with Catherine Guastavino)
      • physically-controlled synthesis: combining physical models and additive synthesis to improve sound quality and controlability (with Philippe Guillemain)
      • sonification of musicians' ancillar gestures
    • collaborators:
      • Marcelo M. Wanderley & Philippe Depalle (SPCL & IDMIL, CIRMMT, McGill)
      • Catherine Guastavino (MIL, CIRMMT, McGill)
      • Philippe Guillemain, Thierry Voinier (LMA-CNRS)
      • Benoît Fabre (LAM-IJLRD)
      • Caroline Traube (LIAM/OICCM, University of Montréal)
  • Nov. 2003–March 2006: Interpolation/extrapolation of playing in digital musical instruments (Ssynth)
    • place: SPCL & IDMIL / CIRMMT, McGill University
    • funding: FQRNT, FQRSC (Québec) & NSERC (Canada)
    • supervisor: Prof. Philippe Depalle & Marcelo M. Wanderley
    • research topics:
      • mapping study in the context of digital musical instruments and their gestural control
      • study of additive synthesis and the sound transformations it allows
      • study of methods for converting spectral envelope representations
      • development of the Ssynth software: realtime additive/substractive synthesizer with gestural control via Open Sound Control (OSC) and advanced morphing functions (C with Python interface to the Pure Data and Max/MSP softwares; Matlab prototyping)
  • Sept. 2000–Sept. 2003: Adaptive Digital Audio Effects (A-DAFx)
    • place: LMA-CNRS (Marseilles, France)
    • funding: CNRS & Région Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur (France)
    • supervisor: Daniel Arfib
    • research topics:
      • exhaustive overview of all digital audio effects and their control
      • definition of adaptiveness of effects: automatic control using sound features
      • overview of sound features that allow for this adaptive control
      • study and formalization of the mapping model of adaptive digital audio effects
      • study of digital audio effects classifications, from a pedagogical point of view
      • software development of a new class of sound effects and transformation, with adaptive control; realtime implementation using the AudioUnit format
    • This research project was awarded by a PhD Thesis Award (Prix de la Thèse) from Le Monde de l'éducation in 2004