Follow That Tune – Adaptive Approach to DTW-based Query-by-Humming System

Dynamic Time Warping is a standard algorithm used for matching time series irrespective of local tempo variations. Its application in the context of Query-by-Humming interface to multimedia databases requires providing of independence transposition, which involves some additional, sometimes computationally expensive processing and may not guarantee the success, e.g., in the presence of a pitch trend or accidental key changes.

The method of tune following, proposed in this paper, enables solving of the pitch alignment problem in an adaptive way inspired by the human ability of ignoring typical errors occurring in sung melodies. The experimental validation performed on the database containing 4431 queries and over 5000 templates confirmed the enhancement introduced by the proposed algorithm in terms of the global recognition rate.