Towards Instrument Segmentation for Music Content Description: a Critical Review of Instrument Classification Techniques

A system capable of describing the musical content of any kind of sound file or sound stream, as it is supposed to be done in MPEG7-compliant applications, should provide an account of the different moments where a certain instrument can be listened to. In this paper we concentrate on reviewing the different techniques that have been so far proposed for automatic classification of musical instruments. As most of the techniques to be discussed are usable only in "solo" performances we will evaluate their applicability to the more complex case of describing sound mixes. We conclude this survey discussing the necessity of developing new strategies for classifying sound mixes without a priori separation of sound sources.