Two Note Based Approaches to Query by Singing/Humming

This paper describes the submissions to the MIREX 2006 Query by Singing/Humming task delivered by Fraunhofer IDMT. The approach presented here is based on extracting the pitch out of monophonic singing (or humming), and hereafter segmenting and quantising it into a melody composed of discrete notes. Finally this melody is compared to a database of indexed melodies, using an error tolerant similarity search. Two algorithms have been submitted that differ in the melody extraction method, roughly characterised by the trade-off between accuracy of transcription (and therefore recall) and computing time needed. A third version accepting queries in midi format has also been submitted.