Music Information Retrieval as Music Understanding

Much of the difficulty in Music Information Retrieval can be traced to problems of good music representations, understanding music structure, and adequate models of music perception. In short, the central problem of Music Information Retrieval is Music Understanding, a topic that also forms the basis for much of the work in the fields of Computer Music and Music Perception. It is important for all of these fields to communicate and share results. With this goal in mind, the author’s work on Music Understanding in interactive systems, including computer accompaniment and style recognition, is discussed.