This method and apparatus extract symbolic high-level musical structure resembling that of a music score. Humming or the like is converted with this invention into a sequence of notes that represent the melody that the user (usually human, but potentially animal) is trying to express. These retrieved notes each contain information such as a pitch, the start time and duration and the series contains the relative order of each note. A possible application of the invention is a music retrieval system whereby humming forms the query to some search engine.