Melody retrieval by self-organizing map with refractoriness

In this research, we propose a similarity-based melody retrieval by self-organizing map with refractoriness. In the self-organizing map with refractoriness, the plural neurons in the Map Layer corresponding to the input can fire sequentially because of the refractoriness. The proposed melody retrieval system using the self-organizing map with refractoriness makes use of this property in order to retrieve plural similar melodies. In this melody retrieval system, as the melody features, tone, rhythm and keyword (genre of music) are employed. We carried out a series of computer experiments and confirmed that the effectiveness of the proposed system.