Evolutionary algorithms and automatic transcription of music

Abstract

The main problem behind Automatic Transcription (Multiple Fundamental Frequency -F0 -Estimation) relies on its complexity. Harmonic collision and partial overlapping create a frequency lattice that is almost impossible to deconstruct. Although traditional approaches to this problem of rely mainly in Digital Signal Processing (DSP) techniques, evolutionary algorithms have been applied recently to this problem and achieved competitive results. We describe all evolutionary approaches to the problem of automatic music transcription and how some were improved so they could achieve competitive results. Finally, we show how the best evolutionary approach performs on piano transcription, when compared with the state-of-the-art.