Melody Extraction Using Chroma-Level Note Tracking and Pitch Mapping

Abstract

A new architecture for melody extraction from polyphonic music is explored in this paper. Specifically, chromagrams are first constructed through the harmonic pitch class profile (HPCP) to measure the salience of melody, and chroma-level notes are tracked by dynamic programming. Then, note detection is performed according to chroma-level note differences between adjacent frames. Next, note pitches are coarsely mapped by maximizing the salience of each note, followed by a fine tuning to fit the dynamic variation within each note. Finally, voicing detection is carried out to determine the presence of melody according to the salience of fine-tuned notes. Note level pitch mapping and fine tuning avoids pitch shifting between different octaves or notes within one note duration. Several experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The experimental results show that the proposed method can track the dynamic pitch changing within each note, and performs well at different signal-to-accompaniment ratios. However, its performance for deep vibratos and pitch glides still needs to be improved.