The Computation of Pitch with Vectors

Abstract

Abstract A pitch model is proposed which is supported by a vector representation of tones. First, an algorithm capable of performing the vector addition of the spectral components of two-tone harmonic complexes is introduced which initially converts the amplitude, frequency, and phase (AFP) parameters into coordinates of the here introduced quotient, distance in octaves, and loudness (QOL) tone space. As QOL is isomorphic to the hue, saturation, and value (HSV) color space, a transformation from QOL to the red, green, and blue (RGB) vector space can be formulated so that the vector addition of two pure tones is conceived by analogy with color mixing operations. Since the QOL to RGB transformation is invertible, the resulting RGB vector sum can be transformed back to QOL. Then, by converting QOL coordinates back to AFP parameters, a tone is found whose frequency supposedly corresponds to the pitch evoked by the original two-tone complex. As for complexes having more than two components, the algorithm is to be sequentially applied to pairs of vectors in such a way that initially the first two vector tones are added together, then the resulting vector is added to the third vector tone, and so on.