Models of musical similarity

I attempt to align and compare the various papers in this Discussion Forum and to draw some general conclusions from them. Because the range of papers is so broad, it is not possible to compare them in detail, and so the comparison is made at the meta-level, comparing the nature of the models and techniques proposed, and the results produced, and discussing how these important papers combine to contribute to our understanding of music cognition. In conclusion, I propose a viewpoint based on memory and learning, to which, I claim, all the work ultimately points.