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EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing
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A Computationally Efficient Method for Polyphonic Pitch Estimation

EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing volume 2009, Article number: 729494 (2009) Cite this article

Abstract

This paper presents a computationally efficient method for polyphonic pitch estimation. The method employs the Fast Resonator Time-Frequency Image (RTFI) as the basic time-frequency analysis tool. The approach is composed of two main stages. First, a preliminary pitch estimation is obtained by means of a simple peak-picking procedure in the pitch energy spectrum. Such spectrum is calculated from the original RTFI energy spectrum according to harmonic grouping principles. Then the incorrect estimations are removed according to spectral irregularity and knowledge of the harmonic structures of the music notes played on commonly used music instruments. The new approach is compared with a variety of other frame-based polyphonic pitch estimation methods, and results demonstrate the high performance and computational efficiency of the approach.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Digital Music, School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, Engineering Building, Mile End Road, London, E14NS, UK

    Ruohua Zhou & Joshua D. Reiss

  2. Signal Processing Institute, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ELB-116, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Marco Mattavelli & Giorgio Zoia

  3. Systems Department, Creative Electronic Systems SA, 1212, Gd-Lancy-Geneva, Switzerland

    Giorgio Zoia

Authors
  1. Ruohua Zhou
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  2. Joshua D. Reiss
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  3. Marco Mattavelli
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  4. Giorgio Zoia
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joshua D. Reiss.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Zhou, R., Reiss, J.D., Mattavelli, M. et al. A Computationally Efficient Method for Polyphonic Pitch Estimation. EURASIP J. Adv. Signal Process. 2009, 729494 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1155/2009/729494

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1155/2009/729494

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