Spectral Envelope Transformation in Singing Voice for Advanced Pitch Shifting

The aim of the present work is to perform a step towards more natural pitch shifting techniques in singing voice for its application in music production and entertainment systems. In this paper, we present an advanced method to achieve natural modifications when applying a pitch shifting process to...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: José L. Santacruz, Lorenzo J. Tardón, Isabel Barbancho, Ana M. Barbancho
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2016-11-01
Series:Applied Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/6/11/368
Description
Summary:The aim of the present work is to perform a step towards more natural pitch shifting techniques in singing voice for its application in music production and entertainment systems. In this paper, we present an advanced method to achieve natural modifications when applying a pitch shifting process to singing voice by modifying the spectral envelope of the audio excerpt. To this end, an all-pole model has been selected to model the spectral envelope, which is estimated using a constrained non-linear optimization. The analysis of the global variations of the spectral envelope was carried out by identifying changes of the parameters of the model along with the changes of the pitch. With the obtained spectral envelope transformation functions, we applied our pitch shifting scheme to some sustained vowels in order to compare results with the same transformation made by using the Flex Pitch plugin of Logic Pro X and pitch synchronous overlap and add technique (PSOLA). This comparison has been carried out by means of both an objective and a subjective evaluation. The latter was done with a survey open to volunteers on our website.
ISSN:2076-3417