Voice And Stream: Perceptual And Computational Modeling Of Voice Separation

Emilios Cambouropoulos
2008 Music Perception  
LISTENERS ARE THOUGHT TO BE CAPABLE of perceiving multiple voices in music. This paper presents different views of what 'voice' means and how the problem of voice separation can be systematically described, with a view to understanding the problem better and developing a systematic description of the cognitive task of segregating voices in music. Well-established perceptual principles of auditory streaming are examined and then tailored to the more specific problem of voice separation in
more » ... ly undifferentiated music. Adopting a perceptual view of musical voice, a computational prototype is developed that splits a musical score (symbolic musical data) into different voices. A single 'voice' may consist of one or more synchronous notes that are perceived as belonging to the same auditory stream. The proposed model is tested against a small dataset that acts as ground truth. The results support the theoretical viewpoint adopted in the paper. Modeling Voice and Stream Separation 81 FIGURE 4. Opening of Chorale 73 (Herr Jesu Christ, du höchstes Gut) by J. S. Bach. FIGURE 5. Excerpt from Beethoven's Sonata Op. 81 Les Adieu (mm. 13-18). FIGURE 11. Number of voices: in terms of literal monophonic voices all existing computational models will determine in the three examples one, two, and three voices, respectively. In terms of harmonic voices, all examples can be understood as comprising three voices (triadic harmony). In terms of perceptual voices/streams, each example is perceived as a single auditory stream (proposed algorithm).
doi:10.1525/mp.2008.26.1.75 fatcat:tqi7kbpi75ewfaivf7e3isp6oa