Cartesian genetic programming applied to pitch estimation of piano notes

Pitch Estimation, also known as Fundamental Frequency (F0) estimation, has been a popular research topic for many years, and is still investigated nowadays. This paper presents a novel approach to the problem of Pitch Estimation, using Cartesian Genetic Programming (CGP). We take advantage of evolutionary algorithms, in particular CGP, to evolve mathematical functions that act as classifiers. These classifiers are used to identify piano notes' pitches in an audio signal. For a first approach, the obtained results are very promising: our error rate outperforms two of three state-of-the-art pitch estimators.