A Real-time Beat Tracking System for Musical Acoustic Signals

Beats Cindy

This project is proposed and researched by Masataka Goto.

Japanese version is here.


We have developed a beat tracking system, called BTS, that processes acoustic signals of music and recognizes temporal positions of beats in real time. Beat tracking is an important initial step in computer emulation of human music understanding, since beats are fundamental to the perception of music. In addition, musical beat tracking is useful for various applications such as video/audio editing, stage lighting control, and synchronization of real-time computer graphics with music.

BTS deals with popular music, particularly rock and pop music in which drums maintain the beat. Not only does BTS predict the temporal position of the next beat (quarter-note); it also determines whether the beat is strong or weak, in other words, BTS can track beats at the half-note level. Because our system examines multiple hypotheses in parallel, it can follow beats without losing track of them, even if some hypotheses become wrong. BTS has been implemented on a parallel computer, the Fujitsu AP1000, to handle this computationally intensive task in real time. In our experiment, BTS correctly tracked beats in 43 out of 45 commercially distributed popular songs.

Afterwards, I have developed a beat tracking system for musical audio signals without drum-sounds. Our recent results for music without drum-sounds were reported at The Second International Conference on Multiagent Systems, IPSJ Special Interest Group on MUSic and computer (in Japanese), and the IJCAI-97 Workshop on Computational Auditory Scene Analysis.

We have also developed a computer-graphics dancer ``Cindy'' who can dance in time to musical beats.


References:

  1. Masataka Goto: An Audio-based Real-time Beat Tracking System for Music With or Without Drum-sounds, Journal of New Music Research, Vol.30, No.2, pp.159-171, June 2001.
    PDF (in a slightly different format)
  2. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: Real-time Beat Tracking for Drumless Audio Signals: Chord Change Detection for Musical Decisions, Speech Communication, Vol.27, Nos.3-4, pp.311-335, April 1999.
    PDF
  3. Masataka Goto: Real-time Beat Tracking for Musical Audio Signals, Proceedings of the First Meeting of Special Interest Group on AI Challenges, SIG-Challenge-9801-2, pp.7-14, November 1998 (in Japanese).
  4. Masataka Goto: Real-time Beat Tracking for Musical Audio Signals, Record of The 1998 Kansai-Section Joint Convention of Institutes of Electrical Engineering, Japan, S12-2, p.S65, November 1998 (in Japanese).
  5. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: An Audio-based Real-time Beat Tracking System and Its Applications, Proceedings of the 1998 International Computer Music Conference, pp.17-20, October 1998.
    PDF
  6. Masataka Goto: Beat Tracking, separate volume of bit: Computer and Music World, pp.100-116, Kyoritsu Shuppan, August 1998 (in Japanese).
  7. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: Music Understanding at the Beat Level: Real-time Beat Tracking for Audio Signals, In David F. Rosenthal and Hiroshi G. Okuno, editors, Computational Auditory Scene Analysis, pp.157-176, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1998.
  8. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: A Real-time Beat Tracking System for Audio Signals --- Application to Drumless Music by Detecting Chord Changes ---, The Transactions of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers D-II, Vol.J81-D-II, No.2, pp.227-237, February 1998 (in Japanese).
  9. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: Real-time Rhythm Tracking for Drumless Audio Signals --- Chord Change Detection for Musical Decisions ---, Working Notes of the IJCAI-97 Workshop on Computational Auditory Scene Analysis, pp.135-144, August 1997.
    PDF
  10. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: Issues in Evaluating Beat Tracking Systems, Working Notes of the IJCAI-97 Workshop on Issues in AI and Music - Evaluation and Assessment, pp.9-16, August 1997.
    PDF
  11. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: A Beat Tracking System for Musical Audio Signals --- Bar-line Detection and Musical Knowledge Selection Based on the Presence of Drum-sounds ---, Information Processing Society of Japan SIG Notes, 97-MUS-21-8, Vol.97, No.67, July 1997 (in Japanese).
  12. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: Beat Tracking based on Multiple-agent Architecture --- A Real-time Beat Tracking System for Audio Signals ---, Proceedings of The Second International Conference on Multiagent Systems, pp.103-110, December 1996.
    PDF
  13. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: A Real-time Beat Tracking System for Audio Signals --- Beat Tracking for Music without Drum-sounds ---, Information Processing Society of Japan SIG Notes, 96-MUS-16-3, Vol.96, No.75, July 1996 (in Japanese).
  14. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: Parallel Implementation of a Beat Tracking System --- Real-time Musical Information Processing on AP1000 ---, Transactions of Information Processing Society of Japan, Vol.37, No.7, pp.1460-1468, July 1996 (in Japanese).
  15. Masataka Goto: Can Computer Keep Time to Music by Hand-clapping? --- A Real-time Beat Tracking System ---, bit, Vol.28, No.3, pp.4-11, Kyoritsu Shuppan, March 1996 (in Japanese).
  16. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: A Real-time Beat Tracking System for Audio Signals, Proceedings of the 1995 International Computer Music Conference, pp.171-174, September 1995.
    PDF
  17. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: Music Understanding At The Beat Level --- Real-time Beat Tracking For Audio Signals ---, Working Notes of the IJCAI-95 Workshop on Computational Auditory Scene Analysis, pp.68-75, August 1995.
    PDF
  18. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: Parallel Implementation of A Real-time Beat Tracking System --- Real-time Musical Information Processing on AP1000 ---, Joint Symposium on Parallel Processing 1995 (JSPP'95) Proceedings, pp.353-360, May 1995 (in Japanese).
  19. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: A Beat Tracking System for Acoustic Signals of Music, ACM Multimedia 94 Proceedings (Second ACM International Conference on Multimedia), pp.365-372, October 1994.
    PDF
  20. David Rosenthal, Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: Rhythm Tracking Using Multiple Hypotheses, Proceedings of the 1994 International Computer Music Conference, pp.85-87, September 1994.
    PDF
  21. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: A Real-time Beat Tracking System for Musical Acoustic Signals, Information Processing Society of Japan SIG Notes, 94-MUS-7-8, Vol.94, No.71, August 1994.
    PDF (in Japanese)
  22. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: Real-time Acoustic Information Processing on a Parallel Computer --- A Beat Tracking System for Musical Acoustic Signals ---, Proceedings of the 49th Annual Convention IPS Japan, 4P-9, September 1994 (in Japanese).
  23. Masataka Goto and Yoichi Muraoka: A Beat Tracking System for Acoustic Signals of Music, Proceedings of the 48th Annual Convention IPS Japan, 4T-4, March 1994 (in Japanese).

If you have any problem in printing, please let me know. I will send you copies of my papers.


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Masataka GOTO <m.goto [at] aist.go.jp>

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last update: February 18, 2002



Joint Symposium on Parallel Processing 1995 (JSPP'95) Proceedings, pp.353-360, May 1995 (in Japanese).

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ACM Multimedia 94 Proceedings, pp.365-372, October 1994.

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Proceedings of the 1994 International Computer Music Conference, pp.85-87, September 1994.

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Information Processing Society of Japan SIG Notes, 94-MUS-7-8, Vol.94, No.71, August 1994. (in Japanese)

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