Tools for Music Information Retrieval and Playing - Intelligent Music Information Systems: Tools and Methodologies - page 123

Figure 1. MAIS query environment: Functional metrics matching mode

The multimedia database has been imple-
mented with object relational technology.
Metadata, links to archive material and content
indexes are stored as MAIS database objects.
Content indexes are musical features extracted
from the source material in preprocessing phase.
Furthermore, in this phase all the source material
is analyzed for the automatic inclusion into the
information system. The results are then included
into a description XML file that works as an
umbrella for the entire source files.
The approach adopted is typically functional,
as we are going to describe in the next section.
In the query form (see Figure 1) is it possible to
choose among different kind of functional metrics

in order to allow different kind of content queries
oriented to different musicological needs.

the functional approach

Functionalism is one of the most consolidated ap-
proaches in the treatment of music comparisons.
In this context musical data (such as melodies,
rhythms, spectra, etc.) are finite sequences of
pitches, rhythms, and so forth, therefore dis-
tance concepts are inherited by metrics defined
in functional spaces whose points are functions
(Polansky, 1996).
Given two continuous real valued functions
f(t) e g(t), defined on a subset of the real line