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[tothl at inf.u-szeged.hu]

>From tothl Wed Aug 27 10:21:45 +0200 1997 remote from inf.u-szeged.hu
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 10:21:45 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Toth Laszlo <tothl at inf.u-szeged.hu>
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To: music-dsp at shoko.calarts.edu
Subject: Re: pitch-tracking needed
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On Tue, 26 Aug 1997, Yvan Grabit wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I search informations (algorithms, codes, articles, books, ...) about
> the pitch detection of an audio signal (pitch-tracker).
> 
> Are there softwares doing this quite good ? (real-time?)
> 
> Does it work when the melody is surrounded by other instruments
> (drums,....) ?
> 
> 
> Thanks...
> 
In speech processing pitch tracking is one of the most fundamental problems.
The best known algorithms can now determine the pitch very reliably 
(although the best ones surely can not work in realtime (on a PC without 
special hardware). I'm sure these algorithms would work well for a single 
instrument playing only one melody (recognizing chords would be MUCH 
trickier). I cannot tell how much their performance would deteriorate if 
other instruments were also present.
Sorry, I can't name any available software, but I can tell you some 
references:
You can find a very good overview of pitch determination algorithms for 
speech in:
M. Cookee: Visual Representation of Speech Signals, Wiley and Sons, 1993
About musical pitch tracking a certain Judith Brown wrote many articles 
in JASA:
Zhang-Brown: Musical Frequency Tracking Using the Methods of Conventional 
and Narrowed Autocorrelation, JASA-89, 2346-2354 (1991)
Brown: Musical Fundamental Frequency Tracking Using a Pattern 
Recognition Method, JASA-92, 1394-1402 (1992)
Brown-Puckette: A High Resolution Fundamental Frequency Determination 
Based On Phase Changes of the Fourier Transform, JASA-94, 662-667 (1993)
(I didn't read these so I can't comment on them)

Hope this helps,
Laszlo

P.s.: Don't forget that human pitch hearing is a very complicated and yet 
not fully understood thing, even if it doesn't seem so.
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*               Toth Laszlo                   *                              *
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