Automatic Piano Transcription Using Frequency and Time-Domain Information

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to propose solutions to some problems that arise in automatic polyphonic transcription of recorded piano music. First, we propose a method that groups spectral information in the frequency-domain and uses a rule-based framework to deal with the known problems of polyphony and harmonicity. Then, we present a novel method for multipitch-estimation that uses both frequency and time-domain information. It assumes signal segments to be the linearly weighted sum of waveforms in a database of individual piano notes. We propose a solution to the problem of generating those waveforms, by using the frequency-domain approach. We show that accurate time-domain transcription can be achieved given an adequate estimation of the database. This suggests an alternative to common frequency-domain approaches that does not require any prior training on a separate database of isolated notes