An Approach for Melody Extraction from Polyphonic Audio: Using Perceptual Principles and Melodic Smoothness

Authors

Abstract

In this research work the problem of melody extraction
from polyphonic audio is addressed. A multi-stage approach
is followed, inspired on principles from perceptual
theory and musical practice. Physiological models
and perceptual cues of sound organization are incorporated
into the method, mimicking the behavior of the
human auditory system to some extent. Moreover, musicological
principles are applied, in order to support the
identification of the musical notes that convey the main
melodic line.
The system comprises three main modules, where a
number of rule-based procedures are proposed: i) pitch
detection, where an auditory model-based pitch detector
is employed for selecting multiple pitches in each analysis
frame; ii) determination of musical notes (with precise
temporal boundaries and pitches); and iii) identification
of melodic notes, based on two core assumptions that we
designate as the salience principle and the melodic
smoothness principle.
Experimental results were conducted, showing that
the method performs satisfactorily under the specified
assumptions, namely when the notes comprising the melody
are in general more intense than the accompanying
instruments. However, additional difficulties are encountered
in song excerpts where the intensity of the melody
in comparison to the surrounding accompaniment is not
so favorable.

Keywords

na

Subject

Music Information Retrieval

Conference

154th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, November 2007

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