In slide query-interface our envisaged user interface for querying is depicted. It provides limited score editing facilities, to enable the user to indicate a melody (including rhythmic structure) in common musical notation. In this stage, we assume some basic musical skills, indeed. In addition to the melodic fragment, which is depicted in the middle frame, we allow the user to give additional information, such as the composer, the name of the song, and (possibly) a text-based outline. The user may also indicate a genre, the instrumentation and additional descriptive features in a free text format, which may include fragments of the lyrics. As concerns the matching algorithm used, the user may express a preference for either strict or approximate matching for the melody or melodic contour, with or without rhythm. See section Match for a discussion of matching algorithms.
The output of a query will be a ranked list of items found in the database. Each item in the list will be represented by a thumbnail of the score, an auditory icon representing the musical fragment found, the name of the song, the composer and a reference to the original musical object on the Web.