Query by rhythm: an approach for song retrieval in music databases

We propose techniques for retrieving songs by rhythm from music databases. The rhythm of songs is modeled by rhythm strings. The song retrieval problem is then transformed to the string matching problem. In order to allow approximate string matching, we define similarity measures on rhythm strings. An index structure, called L-tree, is proposed to support efficient sub-string matching. Retrieval algorithms based on L-tree are then designed to provide approximate and sub- song retrieval. Experimental results show that this approach is effective and efficient.