Query by humming

Abstract

The emergence of audio and video data types in databases will require new information retrieval methods adapted to the specific characteristics and needs of these data types. An effective and natural way of querying a musical audio database is by humming the tune of a song. In this paper, a system for querying an audio database by humming is described along with a scheme for representing the melodic information in a song as relative pitch changes. Relevant difficulties involved with tracking pitch are enumerated, along with the approach we followed, and the performance results of system indicating its effectiveness are presented.