Design and evaluation of dynamic feature-based segmentation on music

Abstract

Segmentation is an indispensable step in the field of Music Information Retrieval (MIR). Segmentation refers to the splitting of a music piece into significant sections. Classically there has been a great deal of attention focused on various issues of segmentation, such as: perceptual segmentation vs. computational segmentation, segmentation evaluations, segmentation algorithms, etc. In this thesis, we conduct a series of perceptual experiments which challenge several of the traditional assumptions with respect to segmentation. Identifying some deficiencies in the current segmentation evaluation methods, we present a novel standardized evaluation approach which considers segmentation as a supportive step towards feature extraction in the MIR process. Furthermore, we propose a simple but effective segmentation algorithm and evaluate it utilizing our evaluation approach.