Synthesis of Acoustic Timbres using Principal Component Analysis

We have developed an alternate method of representing harmonic amplitude envelopes of musical instrument sounds using principal component analysis. Statistical analysis reveals considerable correlation between the harmonic amplitude values at different time positions in the envelopes. This correlation is exploited in order to reduce the dimensionality of envelope specification. It was found that two or three parameters provide a reasonable approximation to the different harmonic envelope curves present in musical instrument sounds. T he representation is suited for the development of high-level control mechanisms for manipulating the timbre of resynthesized harmonic sounds.