Applications of a Semi-automatic Melody Extraction Interface for Indian Music

Automatic extraction of the melody from polyphonic music recordings is a challenging problem for which no general solutions currently exist. We present a novel interface for semi-automatic melody extraction with the goal to provide highly accurate pitch tracks of the lead voice with minimal user intervention. Audio-visual feedback facilitates the validation of the obtained melodic contour, and user control of the analysis parameters enables direct and effective control over the voice pitch detection module by an intelligent user. This paper describes the interface and also an application of the interface for note-level representation of the vocal melody extracted from polyphonic audio in a query-by-humming system. In such a system, the continuous melodic contour needs to be further processed to obtain a suitable note sequence-like representation for more efficient search.