New Music Interfaces for Rhythm-Based Retrieval

In the majority of existing work in music information retrieval (MIR) the user interacts with the system using standard desktop components such as the keyboard, mouse or sometimes microphone input. It is our belief that moving away from the desktop to more physically tangible ways of interacting can lead to novel ways of thinking about MIR. In this paper, we report on our work in utilizing new non-standard interfaces for MIR purposes. One of the most important but frequently neglected ways of characterizing and retrieving music is through rhythmic information. We concentrate on rhythmic information both as user input and as means for retrieval. Algorithms and experiments for rhythm-based information retrieval of music, drum loops and indian tabla thekas are described. This work targets expert users such as DJs and musicians which tend to be more curious about new technologies and therefore can serve as catalysts for accelerating the adoption of MIR techniques. In addition, we describe how the proposed rhythm-based interfaces can assist in the annotation and preservation of perfomance practice.