RWC Music Database: Music Genre Database and Musical Instrument Sound Database

TLDR: The design policy and specifications of the RWC Music Database, a copyright-cleared music database compiled specifically for research purposes, are described and it is hoped that the DB will make a significant contribution to future advances in the field of music information processing.

Abstract: This paper describes the design policy and specifications of the RWC Music Database, a copyright-cleared music database (DB) compiled specifically for research purposes. Shared DBs are common in other research fields and have made significant contributions to progress in those fields. The field of music information processing, however, has lacked a common DB of musical pieces or a large-scale DB of musical instrument sounds. We therefore recently constructed the RWC Music Database comprising four original component DBs: the Popular Music Database (100 pieces), Royalty-Free Music Database (15 pieces), Classical Music Database (50 pieces), and Jazz Music Database (50 pieces). In this paper we report the construction of two additional component DBs: the Music Genre Database (100 pieces) and Musical Instrument Sound Database (50 instruments). For all 315 musical pieces, we prepared original audio signals, corresponding standard MIDI files, and text files of lyrics (for songs). For all 50 instruments, we recorded individual sounds at half-tone intervals with several variations of playing styles, dynamics, instrument manufacturers, and musicians. It is our hope that our DB will make a significant contribution to future advances in the field of music information processing.