Musical note analysis of solo violin recordings using recursive regularization

Composers may not provide instructions for playing their works, especially for instrument solos, and therefore, different musicians may give very different interpretations of the same work. Such differences usually lead to time, amplitude, or frequency variations of musical notes in a phrase in the signal point of view. This paper proposes a frame-based recursive regularization method for time-dependent analysis of each note presenting in solo violin recordings. The system of equations evolves when a new frame is added and an old frame is dropped to track the varying characteristics of violin playing. This method is compared with a time-dependent non-negative matrix factorization method. The complete recordings of both BWV 1005 No. 3 played by Kuijken and 24 Caprices op. 1 no. 24 in A minor played by Paganini are used for the transcription experiment, where the proposed method performs strongly. The analysis results of a short passage extracted from BWV 1005 No. 3 performed by three famous violinists reveal numerous differences in the styles and performances of these violinists.