Overlapping Singer Identification in Music Recordings

Singer identification (SID), which refers to the task of automatically identifying the singer(s) in a music recording, is of great help in handling the rapid proliferation of music data on the internet and digital media. Although a number of SID studies from acoustic features have been reported, most systems are designed to identify the singer in recordings of solo performances. Very little research has considered a more realistic case, which is to identify more than one singer in a music recording. The research presented in this chapter investigates the feasibility of identifying singers in music recordings that contain overlapping (simultaneous) singing voices (e.g., duet or trio singings). This problem is referred to as overlapping singer identification (OSID). Several approaches to OSID are discussed and evaluated in this chapter. In addition, a related issue on how to distinguish solo singings from overlapping singing recordings is also discussed.