Using Oracle Analysis for Decomposition-Based Automatic Music Transcription

One approach to Automatic Music Transcription (AMT) is to decompose a spectrogram with a dictionary matrix that contains a pitch-labelled note spectrum atom in each column. AMT performance is typically measured using frame-based comparison, while an alternative perspective is to use an event-based analysis. We have previously proposed an AMT system, based on the use of structured sparse representations. The method is described and experimental results are given, which are seen to be promising. An inspection of the graphical AMT output known as a piano roll may lead one to think that the performance may be slightly better than is suggested by the AMT metrics used. This leads us to perform an oracle analysis of the AMT system, with some interesting outcomes which may have implications for decomposition based AMT in general