Abstract: Cornelissen et al. (2021) propose representing melodic contour using a linear combination of few cosine functions for a variety of tasks such as visualization, classification and summarization. The authors apply this representation to studying melodies from four traditions (Gregorian chant, German, Chinese and Sioux folk songs) and claim that it provides a common ground for comparing contours across traditions due to its being data independent, i.e., culturally neutral. We study this claim in the domain of Irish Traditional Dance Music and find evidence that challenges its veracity. Specifically, we find that the cosine representation of the melodic contours of this music is not nearly as efficient as it is for the other traditions. We contrast this representation with a principal component analysis of the melodic contours. Our work contributes to a more nuanced understanding of cosine-based representations of melodic contour.