Discovering repeated patterns in music: state of knowledge, challenges, perspectives

This paper discusses the current state of knowledge on musical pattern discovery. Various studies propose computational methods to find repeated musical patterns. Our detailed review of these studies reveals important challenges in musical pattern discovery research: different methods have not yet been directly compared, and the influence of music representation and filtering on the results has not been assessed. Moreover, we need a thorough understanding of musical patterns as perceived by human listeners. A sound evaluation methodology is still lacking. Consequently, we suggest perspectives for musical pattern discovery: future research can provide a comparison of different methods, and an assessment of different music representations and filtering criteria. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods can overcome the lacking evaluation methodology. Musical patterns discovered by human listeners form a reference, but also an object of study, as computational methods can help us understand the criteria underlying human notions of musical repetition.