Melody transcription from music audio:: Approaches and evaluation

Although the process of analyzing an audio recording of a music performance is complex and difficult even for a human listener, there are limited forms of information that may be tractably extracted and yet still enable interesting applications. We discuss melody-roughly, the part a listener might whistle or hum-as one such reduced descriptor of music audio, and consider how to define it, and what use it might be. We go on to describe the results of full-scale evaluations of melody transcription systems conducted in 2004 and 2005, including an overview of the systems submitted, details of how the evaluations were conducted, and a discussion of the results. For our definition of melody, current systems can achieve around 70% correct transcription at the frame level, including distinguishing between the presence or absence of the melody. Melodies transcribed at this level are readily recognizable, and show promise for practical applications.