Efficient pitch detection algorithms for pitched musical instrument sounds: A comparative performance evaluation

Pitch detection of an audio signal is an interesting research topic in the field of speech signal processing. Pitch is one of the most important perceptual features, as it conveys much information about the audio signal. It is closely related to the physical feature of fundamental frequency f₀. For musical instrument sounds, the f₀ and the measured pitch can be considered equivalent. In this paper four pitch detection algorithms have been proposed for pitched musical instrument sounds. The goal of this paper is to investigate how these algorithms should be adapted to pitched musical instrument sounds analysis and to provide a comparative performance evaluation of the most representative state-of-the-art approaches. This study is carried out on a large database of pitched musical instrument sounds, comprising four types of pitched musical instruments violin, trumpet, guitar and flute. The algorithmic performance is assessed according to the ability to estimate pitch contour accurately.