Abstract: Query-by-humming is a much friendlier method for content based music information retrieval systems. Since an input humming query may have various errors, the system should be able to tolerate these errors. This paper represents a new melody matching method for the QBH based MIR system. The fuzzy relationship is established between the input query and the target data in the database by constructing the membership function of the fuzzy subset to judge the similarity of the delta pitches to its target. Both delta pitch and pitch duration ratio are used in melody representation. The DP matching method is taken to do the similarity measurements. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the new method, its top-10 success rate exceeding the traditional 5-level contour approximate matching method by 16%.

Key words: query-by-humming, fuzzy approach, melody representation, melody matching