Interpretable Singing Emotion Recognition Using Acoustic and Vocal Technique Features

Abstract

Singing emotion recognition relies predominantly on deep learning models that achieve strong performance but offer limited insight into the vocal characteristics driving emotion, of- ten overlooking the singing voice as a distinct signal. We propose an interpretable singing emotion recognition framework using a compact set of singing-specific descriptors across prosody, spec- tral features, phonetics, and vocal technique. To decode model decisions and link predictions to measurable acoustic phenomena, we employ SHAP and apply GRAD-CAM to qualitatively assess the learned representations of vocal techniques. Evaluations show that singing-specific features reduce cross-singer variability, while vocal technique descriptors provide interpretable insights into singing expression. Furthermore, out-of-domain evaluation on VocalSet reveals interesting associations between emotional expression and ground-truth technical execution. The analysis highlights vibrato and pharyngeal techniques as salient cues of emotional delivery, with SHAP indicating that vibrato is context-dependent on articulation rate. These findings emphasize the value of domain-specific features for interpretable singing emotion analysis.