Improved Real-Time Monophonic Pitch Tracking with the Extended Complex Kalman Filter

This paper proposes a real-time, sample-by-sample pitch tracker for monophonic audio signals using the Extended Kalman Filter in the complex domain (Extended Complex Kalman Filter). It improves upon the algorithm proposed by the same authors in a previous paper [1] by fixing the issue of slow tracking of rapid note changes. It does so by detecting harmonic change in the signal and resetting the filter whenever a significant harmonic change is detected. Along with the fundamental frequency, the ECKF also tracks the amplitude envelope and instantaneous phase of the input audio signal. The pitch tracker is ideal for detecting ornaments in solo instrument music—such as slides and vibratos. The improved algorithm is tested to track pitch of bowed string (double-bass), plucked string (guitar), and vocal singing samples.

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