In this paper, we propose a musical onset detection method, with reference to polyphonic piano music. This method operates on a frame-by-frame basis and exploits a suitable time-frequency representation of the audio signal. The solution proposed consists of an onset detection algorithm based on Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) and Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NMF). To validate this met...

We present work towards a computer system for the automatic transcription of piano performances. The system takes audio files containing polyphonic piano music as input, and produces MIDI output, representing the pitch, timing and volume of the musical notes. The aim of this work is not to reduce the performance data to common music notation, but to extract the performance parameters for a quan...

The perceptual results of Plomp and Levelt [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 38, 548-560 (1965)] for the sensory dissonance of a pair of pure tones are used to estimate the dissonance of pairs of piano tones. By using the spectra of tones measured for a real piano, the effect of the inharmonicity of the tones is included. This leads to a prediction for how the tuning of this piano should deviate from an ide...

This report constitutes the first deliverable of the “Composition Tools” Task (T6) of the MOSART Research Network Project and the Final Report on a Qualitative Analysis of Composers as Work conducted at the University of Sheffield in collaboration with Mosart. In it we document work towards defining a set of requirements for enhanced support for electroacoustic music composers. Electroacoustic ...

Previous research has demonstrated that preschool children score higher on spatial tests following piano instruction. Three studies were conducted to answer three questions regarding these effects: (1) Which cognitive processes are enhanced by piano instruction? (2) Do different types of instruction have differential effects? (3) Are these effects durable and generalizable? In Study 1, at-risk ...

This paper presents our system for transcription of polyphonic piano music – SONIC. SONIC takes an audio signal of a piano performance and tries to determine which notes were played by the performer, thus producing a list of notes and note onset times approximately matching the performance. SONIC is composed of three main parts: partial extractor, onset detector and note recognizer. We present ...