Automatic Genre Classification of Latin Music Using Ensemble of Classifiers

This paper presents a novel approach to the task of automatic music genre classification which is based on ensemble learning. Feature vectors are extracted from three 30-second music segments from the beginning, middle and end of each music piece. Individual classifiers are trained to account for each music segment. During classification, the output provided by each classifier is combined with the aim of improving music genre classification accuracy. Experiments carried out on a dataset containing 600 music samples from two Latin genres (Tango and Salsa) have shown that for the task of automatic music genre classification, the features extracted from the middle and end music segments provide better results than using the beginning music segment. Furthermore, the proposed ensemble method provides better accuracy than using single classifiers and any individual segment

The GTZAN dataset: Its contents, its faults, their effects on evaluation, and its future use

The GTZAN dataset appears in at least 100 published works, and is the most-used public dataset for evaluation in machine listening research for music genre recognition (MGR). Our recent work, however, shows GTZAN has several faults (repetitions, mislabelings, and distortions), which challenge the interpretability of any result derived using it. In this article, we disprove the claims that all MGR systems are affected in the same ways by these faults, and that the performances of MGR systems in GTZAN are still meaningfully comparable since they all face the same faults. We identify and analyze the contents of GTZAN, and provide a catalog of its faults. We review how GTZAN has been used in MGR research, and find few indications that its faults have been known and considered. Finally, we rigorously study the effects of its faults on evaluating five different MGR systems. The lesson is not to banish GTZAN, but to use it with consideration of its contents.Comment: 29 pages, 7 figures, 6 tables, 128 reference

Deep Learning and Music Adversaries

OA Monitor ExerciseOA Monitor ExerciseAn {\em adversary} is essentially an algorithm intent on making a classification system perform in some particular way given an input, e.g., increase the probability of a false negative. Recent work builds adversaries for deep learning systems applied to image object recognition, which exploits the parameters of the system to find the minimal perturbation of the input image such that the network misclassifies it with high confidence. We adapt this approach to construct and deploy an adversary of deep learning systems applied to music content analysis. In our case, however, the input to the systems is magnitude spectral frames, which requires special care in order to produce valid input audio signals from network-derived perturbations. For two different train-test partitionings of two benchmark datasets, and two different deep architectures, we find that this adversary is very effective in defeating the resulting systems. We find the convolutional networks are more robust, however, compared with systems based on a majority vote over individually classified audio frames. Furthermore, we integrate the adversary into the training of new deep systems, but do not find that this improves their resilience against the same adversary

Improving music genre classification using automatically induced harmony rules

We present a new genre classification framework using both low-level signal-based features and high-level harmony features. A state-of-the-art statistical genre classifier based on timbral features is extended using a first-order random forest containing for each genre rules derived from harmony or chord sequences. This random forest has been automatically induced, using the first-order logic induction algorithm TILDE, from a dataset, in which for each chord the degree and chord category are identified, and covering classical, jazz and pop genre classes. The audio descriptor-based genre classifier contains 206 features, covering spectral, temporal, energy, and pitch characteristics of the audio signal. The fusion of the harmony-based classifier with the extracted feature vectors is tested on three-genre subsets of the GTZAN and ISMIR04 datasets, which contain 300 and 448 recordings, respectively. Machine learning classifiers were tested using 5 × 5-fold cross-validation and feature selection. Results indicate that the proposed harmony-based rules combined with the timbral descriptor-based genre classification system lead to improved genre classification rates