Estimating Tempo and Metrical Features by Tracking the Whole Metrical Hierarchy

2013

Meter is known to play a paramount role in the aesthetic appreciation of music, yet computational modelling remains deficient compared to other dimensions of music analysis. Classical audio-based methods detect the temporal repartition of notes, leading to an onset detection curve that is further analysed, in a second step, for periodicity estimation. Current state of the art in onset detection, based on energy and spectral flux, cannot handle complex but common musical configurations such as dense orchestral textures. Our proposed im-provement of the flux method can detect new notes while ignoring spectral fluctuation produced by vibrato. Concerning periodicity estimation, we demonstrate t…