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Melody, Bass Line, and Harmony Representations for Music Version Identification

Title Melody, Bass Line, and Harmony Representations for Music Version Identification
Publication Type Conference Paper
Year of Publication 2012
Conference Name 21st International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2012): 4th International Workshop on Advances in Music Information Research (AdMIRe 2012)
Authors Salamon, J. , Serrà J. , & Gómez E.
Conference Start Date 17/04/2012
Conference Location Lyon
Abstract In this paper we compare the use of different musical representations for the task of version identification (i.e. retrieving alternative performances of the same musical piece). We automatically compute descriptors representing the melody and bass line using a state-of-the-art melody extraction algorithm, and compare them to a harmony-based descriptor. The similarity of descriptor sequences is computed using a dynamic programming algorithm based on nonlinear time series analysis which has been successfully used for version identification with harmony descriptors. After evaluating the accuracy of individual descriptors, we assess whether performance can be improved by descriptor fusion, for which we apply a classification approach, comparing different classification algorithms. We show that both melody and bass line descriptors carry useful information for version identification, and that combining them increases version detection accuracy. Whilst harmony remains the most reliable musical representation for version identification, we demonstrate how in some cases performance can be improved by combining it with melody and bass line descriptions. Finally, we identify some of the limitations of the proposed descriptor fusion approach, and discuss directions for future research.
preprint/postprint document files/publications/salamonAdMIRe2012.pdf