Chord Segmentation: first results are here!

Hullo Planet!
Three months after starting this blog, finally the first post...
...because finally I have something nice to show off.

My Google Summer Of Code task is enhancing realtime chord extraction in CLAM. So far I've been working on small changes, refactorings, etc. But now I took a small break from that to check whether I can really improve the chord segmentation.

The chord extraction algorithm in CLAM is really good but has a very "raw" output - not exactly something one could use to learn the chords of a favourite song. A big part of my GSoC task was changing this. And the first results are here:

The screenshot shows ChordExtractor output as viewed with the Annotator. The song being analysed is Debaser-WoodenHouse.mp3. The upper half of the screenshot shows the old output (to be exact the ChordExtractor from current svn, as extracted with my computer using fftw3). The lower half shows the new improved segmentation (notice the chord segments are much bigger, not that, well - segmented).

Problem is - this code exists only in my sandbox for now... I unfortunately reverted to my old pre-svn methods of programming - more or less just jabbing at the code as long as the number of segfaults stays manageable (just one with this code, shows how simple the changes are!). The next few days will hopefully see it cleaned and committed to the svn.

What this new improved segmentation actually does ...

Some chords are very similar to others i.e. C# Minor differs from A Major by just one note (G# exchanged for A). When you play just the two common notes for the first 5 seconds and then a full chord for the next 5, you'll know that you're not really changing the chords... but the old algorithm would probably show you a mix of both chords during the first 5 seconds.

The new algorithms calulates a chord similarity matrix and takes this similarity into account when deciding whether a new segment really needs to be inserted. This is enough to produce the results above. I still hope this simplicity will allow some nice improvements... but this is still to be seen (hopefully before the GSoC deadline, *gulp*).

For anyone wishing to see the results, links to the new and old ChordExtractor .pool files for the songs that come as examples with Annotator:
Debaser, Wooden House, old
Debaser, Wooden House, new
Debaser, Coffee Smell, old
Debaser, Coffee Smell, new