Design and Implementation of Natural Language Interface for Impression-Based Music-Retrieval Systems

Abstract

In order to realize a user-friendly impression-based music-retrieval system for input of impressions, it is essential to develop a natural language interface (NLI) that enables users to input impressions without consciously controlling their vocabulary. An NLI requires interpretation rules that represent correspondences between words and the query vectors to be generated from these words. In this paper, we propose a low-cost process where the impression words to be interpreted are estimated through a small number of impression words that have already been related to query vectors, and interpretation rules are made from the results of these estimates. We design an NLI that can interpret 104 impression words, and incorporate it into an existing impression-based music-retrieval system. Results obtained from experiments with 35 subjects prove that inexpensive interpretation rules can be made without decreasing system performance. © Springer-Verlag 2004.