Pitch Contour Extraction of Singing Voice in Polyphonic Recordings of Indian Classical Music

Abstract

In Indian Classical Music (ICM) singing voice is accompanied by continuous drone and percussive instruments. At the onsets of percussion, smooth pitch contour cannot be obtained by conventional pitch detection algorithms. In this paper, the problem of extraction of pitch contour of singing voice in the context of the polyphonic recordings of ICM is addressed. In this method, frames were classified as monophonic / polyphonic and harmonic / inharmonic using novel algorithms developed in Fourier of Fourier Transform domain. The pitch was estimated for those frames which were monophonic and harmonic and for those polyphonic frames where predominant melody was of singing voice. Estimation of pitch was done using Fourier of Fourier Transform doing parabolic interpolation to spectral peaks. The developed method is immune to octave errors and accuracy in pitch estimation is suitable for microtones in ICM.