Melody Matching Directly From Audio

Abstract

In this paper we explore a technique for content-based music retrieval using a continuous pitch contour derived from a recording of the audio query instead of a quantization of the query into discrete notes. Our system determines the pitch for each unit of time in the query and then uses a time-warping algorithm to match this string of pitches against songs in a database of MIDI files. This technique, while much slower at matching, is usually far more accurate than techniques based on discrete notes. It would be an ideal technique to use to provide the final ranking of candidate results produced by a faster but lest robust matching algorithm. 1.