Exploring the effect of rhythmic style classification on automatic tempo estimation

Within ballroom dance music, tempo and rhythmic style are strongly related. In this paper we explore this relationship, by using knowledge of rhythmic style to improve tempo estimation in musical audio signals. We demonstrate how the use of a simple 1-NN classification method, able to determine rhythmic style with 75% accuracy, can lead to an 8% point improvement over existing tempo estimation algorithms with further gains possible through the use of more sophisticated classification techniques.