BEAT TRACKING APPARATUS, BEAT TRACKING METHOD, RECORDING MEDIUM, BEAT TRACKING PROGRAM, AND ROBOT

• US 20100017034A1
• Filed: 07/15/2009
• Published: 01/21/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/16/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (Honda Motor Company)
• Original Assignee: Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (Honda Motor Company)
• Inventors: TAKEDA, Ryu, MURATA, Kazumasa, HASEGAWA, Yuji, OKUNO, Hiroshi, TSUJINO, Hiroshi, NAKADAI, Kazuhiro
• Granted Patent: US 8,594,846 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 700/258
• CPC Class Codes: A63H 3/28 Arrangements of sound-producing means in dolls; Means in dolls for producing sounds
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 1/36 Accompaniment arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 1/40 Rhythm
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 2240/135 Library retrieval index, i.e. using an indexing scheme to efficiently retrieve a music piece
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 2250/371 Gensound equipment, i.e. synthesizing sounds produced by man-made devices, e.g. machines
• CPC Class Codes: G10H 2250/455 Gensound singing voices, i.e. generation of human voices for musical applications, vocal singing sounds or intelligible words at a desired pitch or with desired vocal effects, e.g. by phoneme synthesis

Abstract

A beat tracking apparatus includes: a filtering unit configured to perform a filtering process on an input acoustic signal and to accentuate an onset; a beat interval reliability calculating unit configured to perform a time-frequency pattern matching process employing a mutual correlation function on the acoustic signal of which the onset is accentuated and to calculate a beat interval reliability; and a beat interval estimating unit configured to estimate a beat interval on the basis of the calculated beat interval reliability.

Claims

1. A beat tracking apparatus comprising:

a filtering unit configured to perform a filtering process on an input acoustic signal and to accentuate an onset;

a beat interval reliability calculating unit configured to perform a time-frequency pattern matching process employing a mutual correlation function on the acoustic signal of which the onset is accentuated and to calculate a beat interval reliability; and

a beat interval estimating unit configured to estimate a beat interval on the basis of the calculated beat interval reliability.

2. The beat tracking apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the filtering unit is a Sobel filter.

3. The beat tracking apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

a beat time reliability calculating unit configured to calculate a beat time reliability on the basis of the acoustic signal of which the onset is accentuated by the filtering unit and the beat interval estimated by the beat interval estimating unit; and

a beat time estimating unit configured to estimate a beat time on the basis of the calculated beat time reliability.

4. The beat tracking apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the beat time reliability calculating unit configured to calculate an adjacent beat reliability and a successive beat reliability on the basis of the acoustic signal of which the onset is accentuated and the estimated beat interval and calculates the beat time reliability on the basis of the calculation result.

5. A beat tracking method comprising:

a first step of performing a filtering process on an input acoustic signal and accentuating an onset;

a second step of performing a time-frequency pattern matching process employing a mutual correlation function on the acoustic signal of which the onset is accentuated, and calculating a beat interval reliability; and

a third step of estimating a beat interval on the basis of the calculated beat interval reliability.

6. The beat tracking method according to claim 5, further comprising:

a fourth step of calculating a beat time reliability on the basis of the acoustic signal of which the onset is accentuated in the first step and the beat interval estimated in the third step; and

a fifth step of estimating a beat time on the basis of the calculated beat time reliability.

7. The beat tracking method according to claim 6, wherein the fourth step includes calculating an adjacent beat reliability and a successive beat reliability on the basis of the acoustic signal of which the onset is accentuated and the estimated beat interval and calculating the beat time reliability on the basis of the calculation result.

8. A computer-readable recording medium having recorded thereon a beat tracking program for allowing a computer to perform:

a first step of performing a filtering process on an input acoustic signal and accentuating an onset;

a second step of performing a time-frequency pattern matching process employing a mutual correlation function on the acoustic signal of which the onset is accentuated, and calculating a beat interval reliability; and

a third step of estimating a beat interval on the basis of the calculated beat interval reliability.

9. A beat tracking program allowing a computer to perform:

a first step of performing a filtering process on an input acoustic signal and accentuating an onset;

a second step of performing a time-frequency pattern matching process employing a mutual correlation function on the acoustic signal of which the onset is accentuated, and calculating a beat interval reliability; and

a third step of estimating a beat interval on the basis of the calculated beat interval reliability.

10. A robot comprising:

a sound collecting unit configured to collect and to convert a music sound into a musical acoustic signal;

a voice signal generating unit configured to generate a self-vocalized voice signal by a voice synthesizing process;

a sound outputting unit configured to convert the self-vocalized voice signal into a sound and to output the sound;

a self-vocalized voice regulating unit configured to receive the musical acoustic signal and the self-vocalized voice signal and to generate an acoustic signal acquired by removing a voice component of the self-vocalized voice signal from the musical acoustic signal;

a filtering unit configured to perform a filtering process on the acoustic signal and to accentuate an onset;

a beat interval reliability calculating unit configured to perform a time-frequency pattern matching process employing a mutual correlation function on the acoustic signal of which the onset is accentuated, and to calculate a beat interval reliability;

a beat interval estimating unit configured to estimate a beat interval on the basis of the calculated beat interval reliability;

a beat time reliability calculating unit configured to calculate a beat time reliability on the basis of the acoustic signal of which the onset is accentuated by the filtering unit and the beat interval estimated by the beat interval estimating unit;

a beat time estimating unit configured to estimate a beat time on the basis of the calculated beat time reliability; and

a synchronization unit configured to synchronize the self-vocalized voice signal generated from the voice signal generating unit on the basis of the estimated beat interval and the estimated beat time.