Analysis of Recognition of a Musical Instrument in Sound Mixes Using Support Vector Machines

Experiments with recognition of the dominating musical instrument in sound mixes are interesting from the point of view of music information retrieval, but this task can be very difficult if the mixed sounds are of the same pitch. In this paper, we analyse experiments on recognition of the dominating instrument in mixes of same-pitch sounds of definite pitch. Sound from one octave (no. 4 in MIDI notation) have been chosen, and instruments of various types, including percussive instruments were investigated. Support vector machines were used in our experiments, and statistical analysis of the results was also carefully performed. After discussing the outcomes of these experiments and analyses, we conclude our paper with suggestions regarding directions of possible future research on this subject.