Wavesets segment a signal at zero crossings and enable a catalog of micro-distortions

A waveset (Wishart) is the segment of a signal between one zero-crossing and a third zero-crossing - equivalent to one wave period for a pure sinusoid, but potentially irregular for complex signals: when an upper partial exceeds about half the amplitude of the fundamental, extra zero-crossings appear and multiple wavesets occur per pitch period. Treating the waveset as a unit of transformation enables a catalog of micro-distortions - among them transposition (substituting N wavesets for M, scaling frequency), reversal, omission, shuffling, substitution, and time-stretching. Because the segment boundaries are signal-dependent, waveset operations are fast to compute but introduce artifacts that grow as the signal departs from a single strong periodicity.

Examples

Waveset omission: delete every 3rd waveset to create gaps and noise-infused texture. Waveset transposition: repeat each waveset twice and pitch drops an octave. Waveset substitution with sine makes sound more sinusoidal.

Assessment

What is a waveset? At what condition does a signal produce multiple wavesets per pitch period, and what does this imply for waveset-based pitch transposition?