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Can I take the derivative of a function that represents a piece of music? The music is given in .mp3, .midi or whatever comes in handy.

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    $\begingroup$ Could you be a bit more specific? Do you want to take the derivative of a discrete-time sampled waveform? $\endgroup$
    – Mr.Wizard
    Jun 9, 2013 at 12:35
  • $\begingroup$ @Mr.Wizard sorry, forgot that mp3 is not continuous waveform. Is the waveform of MIDI continuous/is there a simple way to perform fourier transform on a MIDI input? $\endgroup$
    – arax
    Jun 9, 2013 at 12:42
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    $\begingroup$ Midi is like sheet music. If you want a waveform, convert mp3->wav with any external tool (this is easy to do) and then import the wav and work on it as bill sugested $\endgroup$
    – Rojo
    Jun 9, 2013 at 12:51
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    $\begingroup$ If the input is a MIDI, the following is relevant: stackoverflow.com/questions/7592596/… $\endgroup$ Jun 9, 2013 at 14:52

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In Mathematica, you can read in .wav files using Import. Since the data is then a discrete data sequence, you can't take a real calculus-style derivative, but you can take the derivative numerically, for instance, using functions like Differences and DerivativeFilter (thanks Jens). In fact, the derivative operation is a kind of high-pass filter, which will augment the noise and remove the low frequencies. You can listen to the changed sound using SampledSoundFunction or by saving the result out to a .wav file using Export. There are plenty of other ways you can manipulate the sound: LowpassFilter and HighpassFilter come to mind.

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  • $\begingroup$ Don't forget DerivativeFilter for lists. $\endgroup$
    – Jens
    Jun 9, 2013 at 16:22

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