Available at: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/theses/3330
Date of Award
6-2026
Degree Name
MS in Electrical Engineering
Department/Program
Electrical Engineering
College
College of Engineering
Advisor
Wayne Pilkington
Advisor Department
Electrical Engineering
Advisor College
College of Engineering
Abstract
This thesis develops and evaluates a compact parametric additive synthesis model for isolated musical instrument tones. The method analyzes a single-note recording, estimates its fundamental frequency, extracts harmonic amplitude and frequency behavior, and stores the sound as a reduced set of interpretable parameters. These parameters include the note duration, pitch, per-harmonic amplitude envelopes, phase information, and amplitude- and frequency-modulation vibrato parameters. The stored model is then used to resynthesize the tone without directly using the original audio waveform.
The model was evaluated using synthetic signals, real instrument samples, objective error metrics, storage comparisons, pitch and duration modification tests, and listening tests. Results show that the approach can preserve many broad musical features, including pitch, harmonic structure, amplitude envelope shape, and vibrato, while reducing storage compared with standard audio file formats. The strongest results occurred for stable tones with smooth envelopes and regular vibrato, while plucked strings, bright brass tones, and some bowed-string samples exposed limitations in transient modeling, residual noise, pitch detection, and instrument identity preservation. Overall, this work demonstrates that compact additive synthesis is a feasible approach for representing many isolated instrument tones and provides a foundation for future real-time synthesis systems.