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Conference Paper

Automatic Classification of Musical Pieces into Global Cultural Areas

Authors: Kruspe, Anna; Lukashevich, Hanna; Abeßer, Jakob; Großmann, Holger; Dittmar, Christian

AES Conference: 42nd International Conference: Semantic Audio · Paper P1-3 · July 2011

Abstract

Music Information Retrieval (MIR) has a large variety of applications. One aspect that has not gathered a lot of attention yet is the application to non-western music ("world music"). In a task comparable to genre classification, this work's goal is the classification of musical pieces into their corresponding cultural regions of origin. As a basis for such a classification, a three-tier taxonomy based on musical and geographic properties is created. A database consisting of approximately 4400 musical pieces representing the taxonomical classes is assembled and annotated. Based on rhythmic, tonal, and timbre-related audio features, different classification experiments are performed. We achieved an accuracy of approx. 70% for the classification of musical pieces into nine large world regions. Twelve new features that are especially suited for non-western music are implemented. They improve the classification result slightly. For the purpose of comparison, we carried out a listening test with musical laymen with an average accuracy of 52%.

Details

Published in
AES Conference: 42nd International Conference: Semantic Audio
Paper number
P1-3
Publication date
July 6, 2011
Affiliation
Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT, Ilmenau, Germany (See document for exact affiliation information.)
Type
Conference Paper