Combining classifications based on local and global features: Application to singer identification

In this paper we investigate the problem of singer identification on acapella recordings of isolated notes. Most of studies on singer identification describe the content of signals of singing voice with features related to the timbre (such as MFCC or LPC). These features aim to describe the behavior of frequencies at a given instant of time (local features). In this paper, we propose to describe sung tone with the temporal variations of the fundamental frequency (and its harmonics) of the note. The periodic and continuous variations of the frequency trajectories are analyzed on the whole note and the features obtained reflect expressive and intonative elements of singing such as vibrato, tremolo and portamento. The experiments, conducted on two distinct data-sets (lyric and pop-rock singers), prove that the new set of features capture a part of the singer identity. However, these features are less accurate than timbre-based features. We propose to increase the recognition rate of singer identification by combining information conveyed by local and global description of notes. The proposed method, that shows good results, can be adapted for classification problem involving a large number of classes, or to combine classifications with different levels of performance.