Musical Sequence Comparison for Melodic and Rhythmic Similarities

We address the problem of musical sequence comparison for melodic similarity. Starting with a very simple similarity measure, we improve it step-by-step to finally obtain an acceptable measure. While the measure is still simple and has only two tuning parameters, it is better than that proposed by Mongeau and Sankoff (1990) in the sense that it can distinguish variations on a particular theme from a mixed collection of variations on multiple themes by Mozart, more successfully than the Mongeau-Sankoff measure. We also present a measure for quantifying rhythmic similarity and evaluate its performance on popular Japanese songs.