Similarity matching of continuous melody contours for humming querying of melody databases

Music query-by-humming is a challenging problem since the humming query inevitably contains much variation and inaccuracy. In this paper, we present a novel melody similarity matching technique, which is based on continuous melody contour. We introduce a contour alignment technique, which addresses the robustness and efficiency issues. We also present a new melody similarity metric, which is performed directly on continuous melody contours of the query data. This approach cleanly separates the alignment and similarity measurement in the retrieval process. Our melody alignment method can reduce the matching candidate to 1.7% with 90% correct alignment rate. The overall retrieval system achieved 88% correct retrieval in the top 20 rank lists.