Applying Rhythmic Similarity Based on Inner Metric Analysis to Folksong Research

In this paper we investigate the role of rhythmic similarity as part of melodic similarity in the context of Folksong research. We define a rhythmic similarity measure based on Inner Metric Analysis and apply it to groups of similar melodies. The comparison with a similarity measure of the SIMILE software shows that the two models agree on the number of melodies that are considered very similar, but disagree on the less similar melodies. In general, we achieve good results with the retrieval of melodies using rhythmic information, which demonstrates that rhythmic similarity is an important factor to consider in melodic similarity.