Learning the Helix Topology of Musical Pitch

Vincent Lostanlen, Sripathi Sridhar, Brian McFee, Andrew Farnsworth, Juan Pablo Bello

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

To explain the consonance of octaves, music psychologists represent pitch as a helix where azimuth and axial coordinate correspond to pitch class and pitch height respectively. This article addresses the problem of discovering this helical structure from unlabeled audio data. We measure Pearson correlations in the constant-Q transform (CQT) domain to build a K-nearest neighbor graph between frequency subbands. Then, we run the Isomap manifold learning algorithm to represent this graph in a three-dimensional space in which straight lines approximate graph geodesics. Experiments on isolated musical notes demonstrate that the resulting manifold resembles a helix which makes a full turn at every octave. A circular shape is also found in English speech, but not in urban noise. We discuss the impact of various design choices on the visualization: instrumentarium, loudness mapping function, and number of neighbors K.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2020 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, ICASSP 2020 - Proceedings
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages11-15
Number of pages5
ISBN (Electronic)9781509066315
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2020
Event2020 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, ICASSP 2020 - Barcelona, Spain
Duration: May 4 2020May 8 2020

Publication series

NameICASSP, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing - Proceedings
Volume2020-May
ISSN (Print)1520-6149

Conference

Conference2020 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, ICASSP 2020
Country/TerritorySpain
CityBarcelona
Period5/4/205/8/20

Keywords

  • Continuous wavelet transforms
  • distance learning
  • music
  • pitch control (audio)
  • shortest path problem

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Signal Processing
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Learning the Helix Topology of Musical Pitch'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this