Research and Development of a VST Plug-in for the Autonomous Post Production of a Stereo Piano Recording

This thesis describes the research and development of a VST Plugin capable of the autonomous post production of stereo piano recordings within the context of a popular music production. The use of software to make and manipulate music is the focus of the Music Technology industry. Software utilities do not attempt to replace the need for the creativity of technologists but instead allow them to perform increasingly complex methods of production. Automated mixing is a popular area of research and the prototype developed demonstrates that software is able to make creative decisions within production. The piano is a common instrument within popular music and was chosen to be the subject of the research due to the diverse range of sounds it produces. Development involved the implementation of algorithms for signal analysis with the Fast Fourier Transform, frequency domain transformation with digital filters and time domain transformation with dynamic range compression. These procedures were combined to allow the plugin to analyse a signal and calculate effects parameters in real time, resulting in the dynamic and autonomous application of equalisation and compression processing to a piano recording.