A method for solmization of melody

Abstract

This paper presents a novel method for automatic solmization of melody, by which a melody (a sequence of MIDI notes) can be transcribed to sol-fa syllables (i.e. do re me fa sol la ti). Automatic solmization can assist in music skill training, music notation and content-based music retrieval. The proposed method is based on an approach for estimating the music scale of a melody. The key of the major scale ("do") is estimated using music scale models. Due to the diversity of melody types, models for both diatonic and pentatonic scales are employed to avoid the possible key ambiguity for folk songs. The decision of the key of a melody is based on the scale estimation results for aggregating music notes, so that the method can work for both short and long melodies. Experiments have shown that the technique can achieve 95% correct solmization of the melodies of pop songs.