A system for searching for a query string, that represents an audio fragment, in a melody database (114) includes an input (122, 132) for receiving the query string from a user. The melody database (114) stores respective representations of plurality of audio fragments. A processor (116) is used to decompose (117) the query string into a sequence of a plurality of query sub-strings. Each sub-string is independently searched (118) in the database for at least a respective closest match for the sub-string. In dependence on the search results for the respective sub-strings, a closest match for the query string is determined (119).
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