Roughness Minimization Through Automatic Intonation Adjustments
Julián Villegas, Michael Cohen · Journal of New Music Research · 2010
We have created a reintonation system that minimizes measured roughness of parallel sonorities as they are produced. Intonation adjustments are performed by finding, within a user-defined vicinity, a combination of fundamental frequencies that yields minimal roughness. The vicinity imposition limits pitch drift and eases real-time computation. Prior knowledge of the tones played and timbres used is not used for execution of the algorithm. We test a proof of concept prototype by adjusting equal temperament intervals rendered with a harmonic spectrum towards pure intervals in real-time. This prototype exemplifies musical and auditory characteristics of roughness minimization by adaptive techniques. We discuss the results obtained, limitations, possible improvements, and future work.