definition-constraints · ellis2007-beat-tracking-dp

Beat tracking – i.e. deriving from a music audio signal a sequence of beat instants that might correspond to when a human listener would tap his foot – involves satisfying two constraints: On the one hand, the selected instants should generally correspond to moments in the audio where a beat is indicated, for instance by the onset of a note played by one of the instruments. On the other hand, the set of beats should reflect a locally-constant inter-beat-interval, since it is this regular spacing between beat times that defines musical rhythm.