Aligned Self-Organizing Maps

− The concept of similarity is important for many data mining related applications such as content-based music retrieval. Defining similarity can be very difficult if several aspects are involved. For example, music similarity depends on the melody, rhythm, or instruments. The Self-Organizing Map is a powerful tool to visualize how the data looks like from a certain perspective of similarity. In this paper a new technique is proposed to align different SOMs to enable the user to gradually and smoothly change focus from one similarity aspect to another without losing orientation. Furthermore, two applications of these Aligned-SOMs are presented in the music domain.