Tracking Pitch Contours Using Minimum Jerk Trajectories

This paper proposes a fundamental frequency tracker, with the specific purpose of comparing the automatic estimates with pitch contours that are sketched by trained phoneticians. The method uses a frequency domain approach to estimate pitch tracks that form minimum jerk trajectories. This method tries to mimic motor movements of the hand made while sketching. When the fundamental frequency tracked by the proposed method on the oral and laryngograph signals were compared using the MOCHA-TIMIT database, the correlation was 0.98 and the root mean squared error was 4.0 Hz, which was slightly better than a state-of-the-art pitch tracking algorithm included in the ESPS. We also demonstrate how the proposed algorithm could to be applied when comparing with sketches made by phoneticians for the variations in accent II among the Swedish dialects.