Reflection patterns play an important role in seismic sequence stratigraphy, therefore making their quantitative description essential for the construction and validation of sequence stratigraphic models from seismic data. The characteristics of a seismic reflection pattern can be elicited from the data by representing the data as a joint function of time and frequency. Developments in the field of time-frequency analysis have led to t-f representations with better resolution than can be obtained with classical methods for local frequency analysis. This justifies a study of the application of these new representations to the analysis of seismic data. Some examples of the t-f representation of the seismic response of layered sequences are given. They clearly show the contribution of the stratigraphic sequence to the spectral content of the data. The construction of a sequence stratigraphic model from a t-f representation is demonstrated with a field data example where we match a pattern that was observed in the data to a sequence model.