# Cover Song Synthesis by Analogy

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.06347 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.06347/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 17 Jun 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Self-Supervised VQ-VAE for One-Shot Music Style Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.05749/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this work, we pose and address the following "cover song analogies" problem: given a song A by artist 1 and a cover song A' of this song by artist 2, and given a different song B by artist 1, synthesize a song B' which is a cover of B in the style of artist 2. Normally, such a polyphonic style transfer problem would be quite challenging, but we show how the cover songs example constrains the problem, making it easier to solve. First, we extract the longest common beat-synchronous subsequence between A and A', and we time stretch the corresponding beat intervals in A' so that they align with A. We then derive a version of joint 2D convolutional NMF, which we apply to the constant-Q spectrograms of the synchronized segments to learn a translation dictionary of sound templates from A to A'. Finally, we apply the learned templates as filters to the song B, and we mash up the translated filtered components into the synthesized song B' using audio mosaicing. We showcase our algorithm on several examples, including a synthesized cover version of Michael Jackson's "Bad" by Alien Ant Farm, learned from the latter's "Smooth Criminal" cover.'