RETREIVING PITCH OF THE SINGING VOICE IN POLYPHONIC AUDIO

This paper explores the extraction of melodic pitch contour from the polyphonic soundtrack of a song. The motivation for this work lies in developing automatic tools for the melody- based indexing of the database in a music retrieval system. The melody is assumed to be carried by the singer's voice accompanied mainly by percussive instruments. This scenario is typical of a large class of Indian movie songs. The challenges raised by this application are presented. A pitch detection method based on a perceptual model is shown to be a promising approach to the tracking of voice pitch in the presence of strong percussive background.