Proc. of the 11th Int.

Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-08), Espoo, Finland, September 1-4, 2008

A UNIFYING FRAMEWORK FOR ONSET DETECTION, TEMPO ESTIMATION AND

PULSE CLARITY PREDICTION

Olivier Lartillot, Tuomas Eerola, Petri Toiviainen, Jose Fornari∗

Finnish Center of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research,
University of Jyväskylä
Finland
<first.last>@campus.jyu.fi

ABSTRACT 25 participants have rated the pulse clarity of one hundred excerpts
from movie soundtracks. The mapping between the model predic-
An overview of studies dealing with onset detection and tempo
tions and the ratings, discussed in section 6, was carried out via
extraction is reformulated under the new conceptual and computa-
regressions.
tional framework defined by MIRtoolbox [1]. Each approach can
be specified as a flowchart of general high-level signal-processing
operators that can be tuned along diverse options. This frame- 2. COMPUTING THE ONSET DETECTION FUNCTION
work encourages more advanced combinations of the different ap-
proaches and offers the possibility of comparing multiple approaches 2.1. Preprocessing
under a single optimized flowchart. Besides, a composite model
explaining pulse clarity judgments is decomposed into a set of in- First of all, the audio signal is loaded from a file:
dependent factors related to various musical dimensions. To eval-
uate the pulse clarity model, 25 participants have rated the pulse a = miraudio(’myfile.wav’) (1)
clarity of one hundred excerpts from movie soundtracks. The map-
ping between the model predictions and the ratings was carried out The audio signal can be segmented into characteristic and sim-
via regressions. ilar regions based on novelty [2] by calling the mirsegment op-
erator [1]:
1. INTRODUCTION a = mirsegment(a) (2)

MIRtoolbox is a Matlab toolbox offering an extensive set of signal
processing operators and musical feature extractors [1]. The objec-
tive is to design a tool capable of analyzing a large range of musical
dimensions from extensive set of audio files. The first public ver-
sion released last year contains the core of the framework enabling
a broad overview of musical dimensions investigated in compu-
tational music analysis. The aim of current research is mainly to
improve the set of tools by integrating a large range of approaches
currently advertised in the research community.
This paper focuses on the joint questions of onset extraction
and tempo estimation. A synthetic overview of studies in this do-
main is reformulated using the operators defined in MIRtoolbox.
Section 2 shows various methods to compute the onset detection
curve and section 3 deals with the description of the curve, and in
particular the detection of the onsets themselves. The estimation
of tempo from the onset curve is dealt in section 4. Throughout
this review, each approach is modeled in terms of a flowchart of
general high-level signal-processing operators available in MIR-
toolbox with multiple options and parameters to be tuned accord-
ingly. This framework encourages more advanced combinations
of the different approaches and offers the possibility of comparing
multiple approaches under a single optimized flowchart.
In section 5, a composite model explaining pulse clarity judg-
ments is decomposed into a set of independent factors related to
various musical dimensions. To evaluate the pulse clarity model,
∗ This work has been supported by the European Commission (NEST
project “Tuning the Brain for Music", code 028570) and by the Academy
of Finland (project number 119959).
When the tempo is supposed to remain stable within each seg-
ment [3], command (2) automatically ensures that the tempo will
be computed for each segment separately.
2.2. Filterbank decomposition
The estimation of the onset positions generally requires a decom-
position of the audio waveform along particular frequency regions.
The simplest method consists in discarding the high-frequency com-
ponents by filtering the signal with a narrow bandpass filter [4]:
a = mirfilter(a,’Scale’,50,20000) (3)
More subtle models require a multi-channel decomposition of
the signal mimicking auditory processes. This can be done through
filterbank decomposition [5, 6]:
b = mirfilterbank(a,’CriticalBand’,
’Scale’,44,18000) (4)
where more precised specification can be optionally indicated.
Alternatively, the decomposition can be performed via a time-
frequency representation computed through STFFT [7, 3]:
s = mirspectrum(a,’Frame’,’FFT’,
’WinLength’,.023,’s’,
’Hop’,50,’%’) (5)

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Proc. of the 11th Int. Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-08), Espoo, Finland, September 1-4, 2008
further recombined for instance into critical bands1 :
b = mirspectrum(s,’CriticalBand’,
’Scale’,50,20000) (6)
The filterbank is sometimes split into subbands sent to distinct
analyses [8] , for instance:
[l m h]= mirfilterbank(b,’Split’,
[1200 11000]) (7)
The high frequency component h, related to the frequency range
over 11000 Hz, is discarded, the middle register m, for frequencies
over 1200 Hz, will be applied to energy-based analyses (paragraph
2.3):
om = mironsets(m,’Energy’) (8)
whereas the low component l will be applied to frequency-based
analyses (paragraph 2.4):
ol = mironsets(l,’Freq’) (9)
2.3. Energy-based strategy
These strategies focus on the variation of amplitude or energy of
the signal.
2.3.1. Envelope extraction
The description of this temporal evolution of energy results from
an envelope extraction, basically through rectification (or squar-
ing) of the signal, low-pass filtering, and finally downsampling us-
ing the following command:
od = mirenvelope(x) (10)
where x can be either the undecomposed audio signal a, or the
filterbank decomposed b2 , or the middle-frequency band m.
Further refinement enables an improvement of the peak pick-
ing: first the logarithm of the signal is computed [5]3 :
od = mirenvelope(od,’Log’) (11)
and the result is differentiated and half-wave rectified4 :
od = mirenvelope(od,’Diff’,’HWR’) (12)
Some approaches advocate the use of a smoothed differentiator
FIR instead, based on exponential weightening5 [8] (available as a
parameter ’Smooth’ of the ’Diff’ option).
1 This second call of the command mirspectrum does not mean that a
second FFT is computed. It just indicates a further operation on a mirspec-
trum object already computed.
2 It should be mentioned that if x is a mirspectrum object, the command
(10) should include the ’Band’ keyword in order to specify that the enve-
lope should be computed along bands and not the spectrum decomposition
in each frame.
3 A µ-law compression [7] can be specified as well using the ’Mu’ op-
tion.
4 A weighted average of the original envelope and its differentiated ver-
sion [7] can be obtained using the ’Weight’ option.
5 The logarithmic transformation might exempt from this loss of infor-
mation, though.
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2.3.2. Energy
Another strategy consists in computing the (root-)mean-square en-
ergy of each successive frame of the signal [9, 8, 10]:
od = mirrms(x,’Frame’) (13)
2.3.3. Recombining banks
The channels is sometimes recombined immediately after the en-
velope extraction [11]:
od = sum(od,’Band’) (14)
In order to allow the detection of periodicities scattered along
several bands, while still optimizing the analysis accuracy, the re-
combination can be partial, by summing adjacent bands in groups
[7] resulting for instance in four wider-frequency channels:
od = sum(od,’Bands’,4) (15)
2.4. Frequency-based strategy
Frequency-based methods start from the time-frequency represen-
tation too, as in (5), but analyzing this time each successive frame
successively. High-frequency content [12] can be highlighted via
linear weighting:
s = mirspectrum(s,’HFC’) (16)
The contrast between successive frames is observed through dif-
ferentiation, leading to a spectral flux:
od = mirflux(s) (17)
where diverse distance can be specified using the ’Dist’ param-
eter, such as L1 -norm [12] or L2 -norm [8]. Components contribut-
ing to a decrease of energy can be ignored [8] using the ’Inc’
option. Instead of simple differentiation, FIR filter differentiator
[13] can be specified. Each distance between successive frames
can be normalized by the total energy of the first frame (’Norm’
option) in order to ensure a better adaptiveness to volume variabil-
ity [8]. Besides, the computation can be performed in the complex
domain (’Complex’ option) in order to include the phase infor-
mation [14].
The novelty curve designed for musical segmentation, as men-
tioned in section 2.1, can actually be considered as a more refined
way of evaluating distance between frames [15]. We notice in par-
ticular that the use of novelty on multi-pitch extraction results [16]
leads to particular good results when estimating onsets from violin
soli (see Figures 1-4).
f = mirpitch(a,’Frame’) (18)
od = mirnovelty(f) (19)
2.5. Post-processing
If necessary, the onset detection function can be smoothed through
low-pass filtering [15]:
od = smooth(od) (20)
In order to adapt further computation (such as peak picking or
periodicity estimation) to local context, the onset detection curve
can be detrended by removing the median [17, 13, 15]:
od = detrend(od,’Median’) (21)
Proc. of the 11th Int. Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-08), Espoo, Finland, September 1-4, 2008

Pitch

coefficient value (in Hz)

1000

500

0
0 5 10 15
Temporal location of events (in s.)

Figure 1: Multi-pitch extraction from a violin solo recording.

Figure 2: Frame-decomposed generalized and enhanced autocorrelation function [16] used for the multi-pitch extraction.

Similarity matrix
temporal location of frame centers (in s.)

14

12

10

2 4 6 8 10 12 14
temporal location of frame centers (in s.)

Figure 3: Similarity matrix computed from the frame-decomposed autocorrelation function.

Novelty
1
coefficient value

0.5

0
0 5 10 15
Temporal location of events (in s.)

Figure 4: Novelty curve estimated along the diagonal of the similarity matrix [2], and onset detection (circles) featuring one false positive
(the second onset) and one false negative (around time t = 12.5 s.).

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Proc. of the 11th Int. Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-08), Espoo, Finland, September 1-4, 2008
and the onset detection curve can be half-wave rectified as well:
od = hwr(od) (22)
3. NON-PERIODIC CHARACTERIZATIONS OF THE
ONSET DETECTION CURVE
3.1. Articulation
The Low-Energy Rate – commonly defined as the percentage of
frames within a file that have an RMS energy lower than the mean
RMS energy across that file [18] – can be generalized to any kind
of onset detection curve:
art = mirlowenergy(od) (23)
An estimation of the articulation can be assessed by computing
the Average Silence Ratio [19], which can be formalized as a low-
energy rate where the threshold (here, silence threshold) is set to a
fraction of the mean RMS energy:
asr = mirlowenergy(od,’Threshold’,.5) (24)
3.2. Onset detection
Onsets can then be associated to local maxima of the onset detec-
tion curve:
o = peaks(od) (25)
The onsets found on each different bands can be combined to-
gether:
o = sum(o,’Band’) (26)
As one onset, when scattered along several bands, produces a se-
ries of onsets that are not necessarily exactly synchronous, an align-
ment is performed by selecting the major peak within a 50-ms
neighborhood [5]6 .
When combining the hybrid subband scheme defined in equa-
tions (8-9):
o = om + ol (27)
onsets from the higher frequency band, offering better time reso-
lution, are preferably chosen via a weighting sum [8].
3.3. Attack characterization
If the note onset temporal position is estimated using an energy-
based strategy (section 2.3), some characteristics related to the at-
tack phase can be assessed as well.
If the note onset positions are found at local maxima of the
energy curve (amplitude envelope or RMS in particular), they can
be considered as ending positions of the related attack phases. A
complete determination of the attack requires therefore an estima-
tion of its starting position, through an extraction of the preceding
local minima using an appropriate smoothed version of the energy
curve. Figure 5 shows the output of the command:
at = mironsets(’ragtime.wav’,’Attacks’) (28)
Then the characteristics of the attack phase can be its duration or
its mean slope [20]. Figure 6 shows the output of the command:
as = mirattackslope(at) (29)
6 More subtle combination processes have been proposed [5], based on
detailed auditory modeling, but are not integrated in the toolbox yet.
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If on the contrary the note onset positions are found at local
maxima of the temporal derivate of the energy curve [7, 8], then
the attack slope can be directly identified with the values of the
local maxima.
4. TEMPO ESTIMATION
4.1. Pulsation estimation
The periodicity of the onset curve can be assessed in various ways.
4.1.1. Fourier transform
FFT can be computed in separate bands, leading to a so-called
fluctuation pattern [21]:7
p = mirspectrum(od,’FFT’,’Band’) (30)
Similarly, the spectral product removes the harmonics of the
periodicities [13]:
p = mirspectrum(od,’FFT’,’Prod’) (31)
4.1.2. Autocorrelation function
More often, periodicity is estimated via autocorrelation [22]:8
p = mirspectrum(od,’Autocor’) (32)
Alternatively, the autocorrelation phase matrix shows the dis-
tribution of autocorrelation energy in phase space [10]:
ph = mirautocorphase(od) (33)
Metrically-salient lags can then be emphasized by computing
the Shannon entropy of the phase distribution of each lag:
p = entropy(ph,’Lag’) (34)
An emphasis towards best perceived periodicities can be ob-
tained by multiplying the autocorrelation function (or the spec-
trum) with a resonance curve [23, 10] (’Resonance’ option).
4.1.3. Comb filters
Another strategy commonly used for periodicity estimation is based
on a bank of comb filters [6, 7]:
ph = mirspectrum(od,’Comb’) (35)
7 Following our discussion initiated at footnote 2, here the ’Band’ op-
tion is explicitly mentioned as fluctuation pattern is usually computed from
time-frequency representation. The ’Band’ keyword will not be mentioned
in the following commands for clarity sake.
8 In MIRtoolbox 1.0, mirspectrum was strictly related to FFT whereas
mirautocor was related to autocorrelation function. In the new version,
mirspectrum should be understood as a general representation of energy
distribution along frequencies, implemented by various methods.
 Proc. of the 11th Int. Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-08), Espoo, Finland, September 1-4, 2008

Onset curve (Envelope)

0.25

0.2
amplitude

0.15

0.1

0.05

0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
time (s)

Figure 5: Onset detection with determination of the attack phases.

Attack Slope
2
coefficient value

1.5

0.5

0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
Temporal location of events (in s.)

Figure 6: Slope of the attack phases extracted in the previous example.

4.1.4. Event-wise
Periodicities can be estimated also from actual onset positions, ei-
ther detected from the onset detection curve (o, computed in sec-
tion 3.2), or from onset dates read from MIDI files:
o = mironsets(’myfile.mid’)
The periodicities can be displayed with a histogram showing
the distribution of all the possible inter-onset intervals [24]:
h = mirhisto(mirioi(o,’All’))
which can be represented in the frequency domain:
p = mirspectrum(h)
Alternatively, the MIDI file can be transformed into an onset
detection curve by summing Gaussian kernels located at the on-
set points of each note [23]. The onset detection curve can then
be fed to the same analyses as for audio files, as presented at the
beginning of this section.
4.2. Peak picking
The previous paragraph gave an overview of diverse methods for
the estimation of rhythmic periodicity: FFT, autocorrelation func-
tion, comb filters output, histogram. Following the unifying view
encouraged in the mirtoolbox framework, all these diverse repre-
sentation can be considered as one single periodicity spectrum p,
which can be further analyzed as follows.
The periodicity estimation on separate band can be summed
before the peak picking:
p = sum(p,’Band’)
The main pulse can be estimated by extracting the global max-
imum in the spectrum.
mp = peak(p) (40)
The summation of the peaks across bands can also be per-
(36) formed after the peak picking as well [25], with a clustering of
the close peaks and summation of the clusters:
mp = sum(mp,’Band’,’Tolerance’,.02,’s’) (41)
More refined tempo estimation are available as well. For in-
(37) stance, three peaks can be collected for each periodicity spectrum,
and if a multiplicity is found between their lags, the fundamental
is selected [13]. Similarly, harmonics of a series of candidate lag
values can be searched in the autocorrelation function [10].
(38) Finally the peaks in the autocorrelation can be converted into
BPM using the mirtempo operator:
t = mirtempo(mp) (42)
5. MODELING PULSE CLARITY
The computation developed in the previous sections help to offer
a description of the metrical content of musical work in terms of
tempo. But some further analyses may enable to produce further
important information related to rhythm. In particular, one im-
portant way of description musical genre and particular works is
related to the amount of pulsation, more precisely to the clarity of
its expression. The understanding of pulse clarity may yields new
ways to improve automated genre classification in particular.
5.1. Previous work
At least one previous work has studied this dimension [26] – termed
(39) beat strength. The proposed solution is based on the computation

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of the autocorrelation function of the onset detection curve decom-
posed into frames:
p = mirspectrum(o,’Autocor’,’Frame’) (43)
the three best periodicities are extracted [11]:
t = peaks(p,’Total’,3) (44)
These periodicities – or more precisely, their related autocorrela-
tion coefficients – are collected into a histogram:
h = mirhisto(t) (45)
From the histogram, two estimation of beat strength are pro-
posed: the SUM measure sums all the bins of the histogram:
SUM = sum(h) (46)
whereas the PEAK measure divides the maximum value to the
main amplitude:
PEAK = peak(h)/mean(h) (47)
This approach is therefore aimed at understanding the global
metrical aspect of an extensive musical piece. Our study, on the
contrary, is focused here on an understanding of the short-term
characteristics of rhythmical pulse. Indeed, even musical excerpt
less than a few seconds long can easily convey to the listeners a
strong sense of rhythmicity. The analysis of each successive local
context can then be extended to the global scope through usual
statistical techniques.
5.2. Statistical description of the autocorrelation curve
For that purpose, the analysis is focused on the analysis of the
autocorrelation function p itself, as defined in equation (43), and
tries to extract from it any information related to the dominance of
the pulsation. The most evident descriptor is the amplitude of the
main peak, hence the global maximum of the curve:
MAX = max(p) (48)
It seems that the global minimum is usually (inversely) related to
the importance of the main pulsation:
MIN = min(p) (49)
The kurtosis of the main peak describes its distinctness:
KURT = kurtosis(p) (50)
The entropy of the autocorrelation function indicates the quantity
of pulsation information conveyed.
ENTR = entropy(p) (51)
Another hypothesis is that the faster a tempo is, the more clearly it
is perceived by the listeners (due to the increased density of event):
TEMP = mirtempo(p) (52)
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5.3. Harmonic relations between pulsations
The clarity of a pulse seems to decrease if pulsations with no har-
monic relations coexist. We propose to formalize this idea as fol-
lows. First a certain number of peaks are selected from the auto-
correlation curve p:9
pp = peaks(p) (53)
Let the list of peak lags be P = {li }i∈[0,N ] , and let the first
peak l0 be the one considered as the main pulsation, as determined
in paragraph 4.2. The list of peak amplitudes is {p(li )}i∈[0,N ] .
A peak will be inharmonic if the remainder of the euclidian
division of its lag with the lag of the main peak (and the inverted
division as well) is significantly high. This defines the set of inhar-
monic peaks H:
 ˛
˛l ∈ [αl0 , (1 − α)l0 ] (mod l0 )
ff
H = i ∈ [0, N ] ˛˛ i (54)
l0 ∈ [αli , (1 − α)li ] (mod li )
where α is a constant tuned to .15 in our implementation.
The degree of harmonicity is hence decreased by the cumula-
tion of the autocorrelation coefficients of the non-harmonic peaks:
„ P
p(li )
«
HARM = exp − i∈H (55)
βp(l0 )
where β is another constant set to 4.
5.4. Non-periodic accounts of pulse clarity
Other descriptors have been added that do not relate directly to the
periodicity of the pulses, but indicate factors of energy variability
that could contribute to the perception of clear pulsation. Some
factors defined in section 3 have been included:
• the articulation ARTI, based on Average Silence Ratio (24),
• the attack slope ATAK (3.3).
Finally, a variability factor VAR sums the amplitude difference be-
tween successive local extrema of the onset detection curve.
The whole flowchart of operators required for the estimations
of the pulse clarity factors is indicated in Figure 7.
6. MAPPING MODEL PREDICTIONS TO LISTENERS’
RATINGS
In order to assess the validity of the models predicting pulse clar-
ity judgments presented in the previous section, an experimental
protocol has been designed. In a listening test experiment, 25
participants have rated the pulse clarity of one hundred excerpts
from movie soundtracks. In parallel, the same musical database
has been fed to the diverse pulse clarity models presented in the
previous section. The mapping between the model predictions and
the listeners ratings was finally carried out via regressions.
9 If no value is given for the ’Total’ parameter, by default all the lo-
cal maxima offering sufficient contrast with their related local minima are
selected.
Proc. of the 11th Int. Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-08), Espoo, Finland, September 1-4, 2008

VAR = mirpulseclarity
(o,!Variability!)
AS = mirattackslope KURT =
(od) kurtosis(mp)
o = mironsets
(od,!Detect!,!Yes!)
od = mironsets mp = mirpeak(p) TEMP =
(a,!Detect!,!No!) mirtempo(mp)
p = mirspectrum
(o,!Autocor!)
ART = mirlowenergy pp = mirpeaks(p) HARM = mirpulseclarity
(od,!Threshold!,.5) (pp,!Harmony!)
MAX = MIN = ENTR =
max(p) min(p) entropy(p)

Figure 7: Flowchart of operators of the compound pulse clarity model.

6.1. Model optimizations

Table 1: Majors factors correlating with pulse clarity ratings.
One problem raised by the computational framework presented in
this paper is related to the high number of degrees of freedom rank factors correlation between maximal correlation
that have to be specified when choosing the proper onset detec- factor and ratings with previous factors
tion curve and periodicity evaluation method. In the public ver- 1 MAX .46
sion of the toolbox, default strategies and parameter values will be 2 KURT .46 .3
specified. The choice of these default settings will result from an 3 MIN .44 .5
evaluation of the performance offered by the various approaches. 4 HARM .43 .48
Due to the combinatorial complexity of possible configura- 5 VAR .41 .45
tions, we are designing optimization tool that systematically sam-
ple the set of possible solutions and produce a large number of
flowcharts that are progressively run with musical databases and
compared with ground truth data. The pulse clarity experiment 8. REFERENCES
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