---
title: "Towards a Computational Model of Melody Identification in Polyphonic Music"
authors:
  - "Søren Tjagvad Madsen"
  - "Gerhard Widmer"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2007/72"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2007/0072.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Twentieth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 2007
pages: "459-463"
track: ""
keywords:
---

# Towards a Computational Model of Melody Identification in Polyphonic Music

Søren Tjagvad Madsen, Gerhard Widmer

*Proceedings of the Twentieth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 459-463.

## Abstract

This paper presents first steps towards a simple, robust computational model of automatic melody identification. Based on results from music psychology that indicate a relationship between melodic complexity and a listener's attention, we postulate a relationship between musical complexity and the probability of a musical line to be perceived as the melody. We introduce a simple measure of melodic complexity, present an algorithm for predicting the most likely melody note at any point in a piece, and show experimentally that this simple approach works surprisingly well in rather complex music.