Audio Retrieval by Rhythmic Similarity


We present a method for characterizing both the rhythm and
tempo of music. We also present ways to quantitatively measure the rhythmic similarity between two or more works of music. This allows rhythmically similar works to be retrieved from a large collection. A related application is to sequence music by rhythmic similarity, thus providing an automatic “disc jockey” function for musical libraries. Besides specific analysis and retrieval methods, we present small-scale experiments that demonstrate ranking and retrieving musical audio by rhythmic similarity.