Description

This dataset was created in the context of the Pablo project, partially funded by KORG Inc. It contains monophonic recordings of two kind of exercises: single notes and scales. The dataset was reported in the following article:

Romaní Picas O., Parra Rodriguez H., Dabiri D., Tokuda H., Hariya W., Oishi K., & Serra X."A real-time system for measuring sound goodness in instrumental sounds", 138th Audio Engineering Society Convention (2015). 

The recordings were made in the Universitat Pompeu Fabra / Phonos recording studio by 15 different professional musicians, all of them holding a music degree and having some expertise in teaching. 12 different instruments were recorded using one or up to 4 different microphones (depending on the recording session). For all the instruments the whole set of playable semitones in the instrument is recorded several times with different tonal characteristics. Each note is recorded into a separate mono .flac audio file of 48kHz and 32 bits. The tonal characteristics are explained both in the the following section and the related publication.

The audio files are organised in one directory for each recording session. In addition to the files, one SQLite database file is included. The structure of the database is related in the following section.

The database is meant for organizing the sounds in a handy way. It is organised in four different tables: sounds, takes, packs and ratings.

Sounds

The table containing the sounds annotations.

  • id
  • instrument : flute, cello, clarinet, trumpet, violin, sax_alto, sax_tenor, sax_baritone, sax_soprano, oboe, piccolo, bass
  • note
  • octave
  • dynamics : for some sounds, the musical notation of the loudness level (p, mf, f..)
  • recorded_at : recording date and time
  • location : recording place
  • player : the musician who recorded it. For detailed information about the musicians please contact us.
  • bow_velocity : for some string instruments the velocity of the bow (slow, medieum, fast)
  • bridge_position : for some string instruments the position of the bow (tasto, middle, ponticello)
  • string : for some string instruments the number of the string in which the sound it's played (1: lowest in pitch)
  • csv_file : used for creation of the DB
  • csv_id : used for creation of the DB
  • pack_filename : used for creation of the DB
  • pack_id : used for creation of the DB
  • attack : for single notes, manual annotation of the onset in samples.
  • decay : for single notes, manual annotation of the decay in samples.
  • sustain : for single notes, manual annotation of the beginnig of the sustained part in samples.
  • release : for single notes, manual annotation of the beginnig of the release part in samples.
  • offset : for single notes, manual annotation of the offset in samples
  • reference : 1 if sound was used to create the models in the good-sounds project, 0 if not.
  • klass : user generated tags of the tonal qualities of the sound. They also contain information about the exercise, that could be single note or scale.
    • "good-sound": good examples of single note
    • "bad": bad example of one of the sound attributes defined in the project (please read the papers for a detailed explanation)
    • "scale-good": good example of a one octave scale going up and down (15 notes). If the scale is minor a tagged "minor" is also available.
    • "scale-bad": bad example scale of one of the sounds defined in the project. (15 notes up and down).
  • comments : if any
  • semitone : midi note
  • pitch_reference : the reference pitch

Takes

A sound can have several takes as some of them were recorded using different microphones at the same time. Each take has an associated audio file.
  • id
  • microphone
  • filename : the name of the associated audio file
  • original_filename :
  • freesound_id : for some sounds uploaded to freesound.org
  • sound_id : the id of the sound in the DB
  • goodsound_id : for some of the sounds available in good-sounds.org

Packs

A pack is a group of sounds from the same recording session. The audio files are organised in the *sound_files* directory in subfolders with the pack name to which they belong.
  • id
  • name
  • description

Ratings

Some musicians rated some sounds in a 0-10 goodness scale for the user evaluatio of the first project prototype. Please read the paper for more detailed information.
  • id
  • mark: the rate or score.
  • type: the klass of the sound. Related to the tags of the sound.
  • created_at
  • comments
  • sound_id
  • rater: the musician who rated the sound.

Conditions of Use

Dataset compiled and authored by Oriol Romani Picas, Hector Parra Rodriguez, Giuseppe Bandiera, Dara Dabiri & Xavier Serra. Copyright © 2016 Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. All Rights Reserved.

The Good-sounds.org dataset is provided with a CC BY-NC 4.0 license

Please cite one of the following papers if you use this dataset in your work:

  • Romani Picas O. Dabiri D., Serra X. "A real-time system for meauring sound goodness in instrumental sounds" 138th Audio Engineering Society Convention, Warsarw, 2015
  • Bandiera G. Romani Picas O., Serra X. "Good-sounds.org: a framework to explore goodness in instrumental sounds" 17th International Society of Music Information Retrieval, New York, 2016

Contact

For any kind of feedback please contact: 
[email protected]

Download

To download the dataset.