Things to consider

Data

• Data-collection types (centralised, distributed, library, SQL-database, etc.)

• Data format-types (audio, semi-structured symbolic, score, etc.)

• Data formats (MP3, AAC, MIDI, MusicXML^?, etc.)

• Musical genres and styles affecting search

• 'Data-filtering' (e.g. removing/ignoring percussion)

• Melodic-feature extraction

• • e.g. grouped melodic fragments obtained via spectrogram or via ICA-type techniques?

Queries

• Query types (complete files, extracts, selections, etc.)

• Query language ??

Matching

• Pitch-based

• Rhythm-based

• Harmony-based

• Timbre-based

• Combining the above (in the search or in presentation of results?)

Searching

• Search by Example

• Search-type (known-item, discovery, browse, etc.)

• Search mode (?) (document-level, passage-level)

Metadata

• Use of non-content-derived metadata (filtering, etc.)

• Links to external metadata resources

User Interface

• Result lists

• Novel GUIs for navigating results

• 'Refine search' mechanism

• Parameter selection

• Post-search filtering (using sliders, etc.)

• Document-clustering based on search results

• Weighting to emphasise precision or recall (user-choice)

-- TimCrawford - 19 Jan 2007