Pitch Tracking and Melody Slope Matching for Song Retrieval

Abstract

There have been several query-by-humming techniques developed for music retrieval. The techniques either are error-prone due to the inaccuracy of the hummed query or force the users to hum according to a metronome. This paper presents a new slope-based query-by-humming technique, in which the retrieval is robust to the inaccuracy in query and the use of metronome is eliminated. A pitch tracking method is developed to construct the melody curve from a user’s humming. The method is robust to the noise in the humming. Users are even allowed to sing the melody with lyrics. We use melody curve to represent the melodies of the original songs and the hummed query. And curve features like melody slope pitch range, time duration and note changes in the slopes are extracted from the melody curves. A melody slope matching method has been developed to do music retrieval, in which the melody slopes from a query is matched with the melody slopes for the original songs in the database. Results have shown the pitch tracking method and slope-based feature matching algorithms are robust to humming inaccuracy.