Re: [Phys-l] Question about pitch and sustain measurements

[Brian Whatcott <betwys1@sbcglobal.net>]

curtis osterhoudt wrote:
> ...a consulting project ... to measure (semi-automatically, if possible), the pitch and sustain of various notes in an instrument. He has access to Cakewalk's SONAR program, with which I have no familiarity (he said he has v. 5; v. 8 is the latest). I'd be very willing to bet that it can measure pitch (or at least frequency), but I'm unsure of its transient measurement capabilities....
>    Do people here happen to know of any ... projects...which would return some well-characterized measurements  of pitch and sustain, given "live" microphone readings?
>                                         Curtis O.
I see that identifying the pitch of a particular instrument from a 
polyphonic source
is not the easiest task:
http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~dwang/papers/Li-Wang.icassp07.pdf
(nor automatically identifying a melody from a polyphonic source, for 
that matter)

,...and I see that identifying the pitch of a solo instrument, played 
one tone at a time,
is the sort of capability readily embedded in  e.g  commercial string 
instrument tuners (~$20)

I am guessing that displaying the (ADSR) envelope of an isolated tone is 
most easily seen in one of the many audio oscilloscope style displays 
available. Then again, nobody seems to be bragging about automatic ADSR 
charcterization of instrumental tones....

Brian W