Music IR: Past, Present, and Future

Music Information Retrieval has a longer history than most people realise, with systems developed in the 1960's. The field has its roots in information retrieval, musicology and music psychology. Information retrieval has provided us with a framework for evaluating retrieval systems. Musicologists have applied various techniques to measure stylistic parameters of composers and general similarity of musical works. Music perception research has taught us that contour is the most important feature of melody for listeners (Dowling 1978). Precursors to computerised music IR are the incipit and theme indexes such as Barlow and Morganstern's dictionary of musical themes (Barlow and Morganstern 1948), however, on-line collections with incipit indexes were soon to follow (for example Hudson 1970). The current trend in music IR research has been to develop systems that allow the location of answers to queries presented as hummed melodies, or entered in some other way. The earliest sys...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: ISMIR
• Authors: Alexandra L. Uitdenbogerd
• Keywords: Information Retrieval, ISMIR 2000, Music, Music Ir, Music Ir Research