We present a bottom-up method for melody detection in polyphonic musical signals. Our approach is based on the assumption that the melodic line is often salient in terms of note intensity (energy). First, trajectories of the most intense harmonic groups are constructed. Next, note candidates are obtained by trajectory segmentation (in terms of frequency and energy variations). Too short, low-energy and octave-related notes are then eliminated. Finally, the melody is extracted by selecting the most important notes at each time, based on their intensity. We tested our method with excerpts from 12 songs encompassing several genres. In the songs where the solo stands out clearly, most of the melody notes were successfully detected. However, for songs where the melody is not that salient, the algorithm performed poorly. Nevertheless, we could say that the results are encouraging.

Authors: Paiva, Rui Pedro; Mendes, Teresa; Cardoso, Amilcar
Affiliation: CISUC (Center for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra), Department of Informatics Engineering, University of Coimbra (Polo II), Coimbra, Portugal
AES Convention: 116 (May 2004) Paper Number: 6029
Publication Date: May 1, 2004
Subject: Analysis and Synthesis of Sound

Click to purchase paper as a non-member or you can login as an AES member to see more options.

No AES members have commented on this paper yet.

Subscribe to this discussion

To be notified of new comments on this paper you can subscribe to this RSS feed. Forum users should login to see additional options.

Start a discussion!

If you would like to start a discussion about this paper and are an AES member then you can login here:
Username:
Password:

If you are not yet an AES member and have something important to say about this paper then we urge you to join the AES today and make your voice heard. You can join online today by clicking here.