Music tempo estimation using sub-band synchrony

Tempo estimation aims at estimating the pace of a musical piece measured in beats per minute. This paper presents a new tempo estimation method that utilizes coherent energy changes across multiple frequency sub-bands to identify the onsets. A new measure, called the sub-band synchrony, is proposed to detect and quantify the coherent amplitude changes across multiple sub-bands. Given a musical piece, our method first detects the onsets using the sub-band synchrony measure. The periodicity of the resulting onset curve, measured using the autocorrelation function, is used to estimate the tempo value. The performance of the sub-band synchrony based tempo estimation method is evaluated on two music databases. Experimental results indicate a reasonable improvement in performance when compared to conventional methods of tempo estimation

Consonance perception beyond the traditional existence region of pitch

Some theories posit that the perception of consonance is based on neural periodicity detection, which is dependent on accurate phase locking of auditory nerve fibers to features of the stimulus waveform. In the current study, 15 listeners were asked to rate the pleasantness of complex tone dyads (2 note chords) forming various harmonic intervals and bandpass filtered in a high-frequency region (all components >5.8 kHz), where phase locking to the rapid stimulus fine structure is thought to be severely degraded or absent. The two notes were presented to opposite ears. Consonant intervals (minor third and perfect fifth) received higher ratings than dissonant intervals (minor second and tritone). The results could not be explained in terms of phase locking to the slower waveform envelope because the preference for consonant intervals was higher when the stimuli were harmonic, compared to a condition in which they were made inharmonic by shifting their component frequencies by a constant offset, so as to preserve their envelope periodicity. Overall the results indicate that, if phase locking is indeed absent at frequencies greater than ∼5 kHz, neural periodicity detection is not necessary for the perception of consonance