the embodiment compares one or more audio recordings u201c candidate recording u201d with a template u201c master recording u201d that contains the motif or phrase to be detected typically the template will be a time interval of a recording processed by similar means than described in this emobidment like in the first embodiment the time frequency transformation used is the gabor transform the time frequency density of a u201c candidate recording u201d is computed using logarithmically spaced frequencies from an appropriate interval e g the frequency range of a piano this logarithmic scale may be translated in such a way that the frequency of the maximum of the energy density corresponds to a value of the scale the time frequency energy density such computed is sliced with a plane orthogonal to the energy axis the result of such a slicing operation is a set of ellipses as the ones illustrated in fig1 these ellipses are characterized by a triplet that consists of the time and frequency coordinate of the intersection of the ellipses major axis and the maximal or integral energy of the density enclosed by the ellipse standard techniques like those described in the first embodiment can than be used to find those segments in the candidate recordings point patterns that are similar or identical to those in the template a template like the one shown in.