Re: Robust method of fundamental frequency estimation

[lazzaro <lazzaro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 31, 2007, at 4:42 PM, Kelley Fitz wrote:

> There has been work on pitch-tracking for piano notes, but f0 is a
> slippery concept for something with partials that are so badly  
> mistuned.
> If by f0 you mean the frequency of a harmonic tone with which that  
> piano
> note would sound "in-tune", then I think there is research that can
> point you in the right direction. For classical definitions of f0
> though, I am not sure how you would know what to expect for a piano  
> note
> any more than you would know what to expect for a gong.


At the risk of sidetracking a science discussion with an art  
question ...

I've always wondered why playing a bass line on the bottom octaves
of the piano can almost never serve the same sonic role as playing
the same bass line on a stand-up (acoustic) bass or electric bass guitar
(I'm talking about a popular music and jazz context here).

Even if we're restrict the discussion to a bass line that uses none  
of the
extra expressive powers of acoustic and electric basses (no legato, no
vibrato, none of the expressiveness a good player gets by varying
the attack, etc) ... there's a way that a bass player grounds a song
that the left hand of an acoustic pianist just can't.

Do we understand what's at the bottom of this (so to speak :-)?

I had always thought it was the weakness of the fundamental
partial in the low piano tones (thus the link to this thread), but
as Kelly brings up above, maybe its because in that range, a
piano is a lot closer to a gong in its harmonic relationships than
a bass guitar.

---
John Lazzaro
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~lazzaro
lazzaro [at] cs [dot] berkeley [dot] edu
---