Download Identification of individual guitar sounds by support vector machines
This paper introduces an automatic classification system for the identification of individual classical guitars by single notes played on these guitars. The classification is performed by Support Vector Machines (SVM) that have been trained with the features of the single notes. The features used for classification were the time series of the partial tones, the time series of the MFCCs (Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients), and the “nontonal” contributions to the spectrum. The influences of these features on the classification success are reported. With this system, 80% of the sounds recorded with three different guitars were classified correctly. A supplementary classification experiment was carried out with human listeners resulting in a rate of 65% of correct classifications.
Download Real-time detection and visualization of clarinet bad sounds
This paper describes an approach on real-time performance 3D visualization in the context of music education. A tool is described that produces sound visualizations during a student performance that are intuitively linked to common mistakes frequently observed in the performances of novice to intermediate students. The paper discusses the case of clarinet students. Nevertheless, the approach is also well suited for a wide range of wind or other instruments where similar mistakes are often encountered.
Download Time mosaics - An image processing approach to audio visualization
This paper presents a new approach to the visualization of monophonic audio files that simultaneously illustrates general audio properties and the component sounds that comprise a given input file. This approach represents sound clip sequences using archetypal images which are subjected to image processing filters driven by audio characteristics such as power, pitch and signalto-noise ratio. Where the audio is comprised of a single sound it is represented by a single image that has been subjected to filtering. Heterogeneous audio files are represented as a seamless image mosaic along a time axis where each component image in the mosaic maps directly to a discovered component sound. To support this, in a given audio file, the system separates individual sounds and reveals the overlapping period between sound clips. Compared with existing visualization methods such as oscilloscopes and spectrograms, this approach yields more accessible illustrations of audio files, which are suitable for casual and nonexpert users. We propose that this method could be used as an efficient means of scanning audio database queries and navigating audio databases through browsing, since the user can visually scan the file contents and audio properties simultaneously.
Download Score level timbre transformations of violin sounds
The ability of a sound synthesizer to provide realistic sounds depends to a great extent on the availability of expressive controls. One of the most important expressive features a user of the synthesizer would desire to have control of, is timbre. Timbre is a complex concept related to many musical indications in a score such as dynamics, accents, hand position, string played, or even indications referring timbre itself. Musical indications are in turn related to low level performance controls such as bow velocity or bow force. With the help of a data acquisition system able to record sound synchronized to performance controls and aligned to the performed score and by means of statistical analysis, we are able to model the interrelations among sound (timbre), controls and musical score indications. In this paper we present a procedure for score-controlled timbre transformations of violin sounds within a sample based synthesizer. Given a sound sample and its trajectory of performance controls: 1) a transformation of the controls trajectory is carried out according to the score indications, 2) a new timbre corresponding to the transformed trajectory is predicted by means of a timbre model that relates timbre with performance controls and 3) the timbre of the original sound is transformed by applying a timevarying filter calculated frame by frame as the difference of the original and predicted envelopes.
Download Analysis-and-manipulation approach to pitch and duration of musical instrument sounds without distorting timbral characteristics
This paper presents an analysis-manipulation method that can generate musical instrument sounds with arbitrary pitches and durations from the sound of a given musical instrument (called seed) without distorting its timbral characteristics. Based on psychoacoustical knowledge of the auditory effects of timbres, we defined timbral features based on the spectrogram of the sound of a musical instrument as (i) the relative amplitudes of the harmonic peaks, (ii) the distribution of the inharmonic component, and (iii) temporal envelopes. First, to analyze the timbral features of a seed, it was separated into harmonic and inharmonic components using Itoyama’s integrated model. For pitch manipulation, we took into account the pitch-dependency of features (i) and (ii). We predicted the values of each feature by using a cubic polynomial that approximated the distribution of these features over pitches. To manipulate duration, we focused on preserving feature (iii) in the attack and decay duration of a seed. Therefore, only steady durations were expanded or shrunk. In addition, we propose a method for reproducing the properties of vibrato. Experimental results demonstrated the quality of the synthesized sounds produced using our method. The spectral and MFCC distances between the synthesized sounds and actual sounds of 32 instruments were reduced by 64.70% and 32.31%, respectively.
Download Automated rhythmic transformation of musical audio
Time-scale transformations of audio signals have traditionally relied exclusively upon manipulations of tempo. We present a novel technique for automatic mixing and synchronization between two musical signals. In this transformation, the original signal assumes the tempo, meter, and rhythmic structure of the model signal, while the extracted downbeats and salient intra-measure infrastructure of the original are maintained.
Download Inferring the hand configuration from hand clapping sounds
In this paper, a technique for inferring the configuration of a clapper’s hands from a hand clapping sound is described. The method was developed based on analysis of synthetic and recorded hand clap sounds, labeled with the corresponding hand configurations. A naïve Bayes classifier was constructed to automatically classify the data using two different feature sets. The results indicate that the approach is applicable for inferring the hand configuration.