Pitch estimation using multiple independent time-frequency windows

Abstract

A system for the detection of the pitch of musical sounds at a wide pitch range and in diverse conditions is presented. The system is built upon a pitch model that calculates independent pitch estimates in separate time-frequency windows and then combines them to yield a single estimate of the pitch. Both psychoacoustic and computational experiments were carried out to determine the optimal sizes of the elementary windows. The robustness of the system in wide-band additive noise and in the interference of another harmonic sound are demonstrated. An extension of the algorithm to the multi-pitch case is described, and simulation results for two-voice polyphonics are presented.