Correlation-Based Amplitude Estimation of Coincident Partials in Monaural Musical Signals

This paper presents a method for estimating the amplitude of coincident partials generated by harmonic musical sources (instruments and vocals). It was developed as an alternative to the commonly used interpolation approach, which has several limitations in terms of performance and applicability. The strategy is based on the following observations: (a) the parameters of partials vary with time; (b) such a variation tends to be correlated when the partials belong to the same source; (c) the presence of an interfering coincident partial reduces the correlation; and (d) such a reduction is proportional to the relative amplitude of the interfering partial. Besides the improved accuracy, the proposed technique has other advantages over its predecessors: it works properly even if the sources have the same fundamental frequency, it is able to estimate the first partial (fundamental), which is not possible using the conventional interpolation method, it can estimate the amplitude of a given partial even if its neighbors suffer intense interference from other sources, it works properly under noisy conditions, and it is immune to intraframe permutation errors. Experimental results show that the strategy clearly outperforms the interpolation approach.