Download Multiple-F0 tracking based on a high-order HMM model This paper is about multiple-F0 tracking and the estimation of the number of harmonic source streams in music sound signals. A source stream is understood as generated from a note played by a musical instrument. A note is described by a hidden Markov model (HMM) having two states: the attack state and the sustain state. It is proposed to first perform the tracking of F0 candidates using a high-order hidden Markov model, based on a forward-backward dynamic programming scheme. The propagated weights are calculated in the forward tracking stage, followed by an iterative tracking of the most likely trajectories in the backward tracking stage. Then, the estimation of the underlying source streams is carried out by means of iteratively pruning the candidate trajectories in a maximum likelihood manner. The proposed system is evaluated by a specially constructed polyphonic music database. Compared with the frame-based estimation systems, the tracking mechanism improves significantly the accuracy rate.
Download On the Use of Perceptual Properties for Melody Estimation This paper is about the use of perceptual principles for melody estimation. The melody stream is understood as generated by the most dominant source. Since the source with the strongest energy may not be perceptually the most dominant one, it is proposed to study the perceptual properties for melody estimation: loudness, masking effect and timbre similarity. The related criteria are integrated into a melody estimation system and their respective contributions are evaluated. The effectiveness of these perceptual criteria is confirmed by the evaluation results using more than one hundred excerpts of music recordings.
Download Concatenative Sound Texture Synthesis Methods and Evaluation Concatenative synthesis is a practical approach to sound texture synthesis because of its nature in keeping realistic short-time signal characteristics. In this article, we investigate three concatenative synthesis methods for sound textures: concatenative synthesis with descriptor controls (CSDC), Montage synthesis (MS) and a new method called AudioTexture (AT). The respective algorithms are presented, focusing on the identification and selection of concatenation units. The evaluation demonstrates that the presented algorithms are of close performance in terms of quality and similarity compared to the reference original sounds.