Instrument identification in polyphonic music signals based on individual partials

A new approach to instrument identification based on individual partials is presented. It makes identification possible even when the concurrently played instrument sounds have a high degree of spectral overlapping. A pairwise comparison scheme which emphasizes the specific differences between each pair of instruments is used for classification. Finally, the proposed method only requires a single note from each instrument to perform the classification. If more than one partial is available the resulting multiple classification decisions can be summarized to further improve instrument identification for the whole signal. Encouraging classification results have been obtained in the identification of four instruments (saxophone, piano, violin and guitar).