A Music Information System Based on Improved Melody Contour Extraction

In this paper, we propose a new melody contour extraction technique to improve Query-by-Humming. A critical issue of humming sound is noise interference from both environment and acquisition instrument. Furthermore most users are not professional singers so they cause the other query problems about variation of pitch and timing. Advantage of a proposed technique can reduce noise whereas makes pitch smoothing. Moreover, this method is used to enhance the query accuracy. Our technique consists of three steps as follows: Firstly, the melody contour is extracted from humming sound by Subharmonic-to-Harmonic Ratio (SHR). Subsequently, the melody contour is filtered and smoothed by statistical approach. Finally, Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) is applied to melody contour, for similarity measurement between humming sound and melody sequence. We use a new method to extract melody contour from pitch. Experimental results show that our proposed technique can perform better than traditional method.