Websites (and A Prog) That Promise to Help You Name That (Forgotten) Tune

sleepy · Aug 5, 2012

Well, I'll tell 'ya. Yesterday my brain quit, and I could not remember for the life of me that the middle part of a song that I was humming to myself was actually from the great reggae tune, "Red Red Wine".

This drove me crazy.

So I Googled for "music recognition software" and I found these sites which promise to take your microphone, your MIDI keyboard, your *unknown* .mp3, or the notes and contours which you apply with the mouse to the embedded webpage Flash or javascript music controls and...come up with the proper name for the tune.

Well, I dunno.

This site offers a software download fer doin' it. WARNING. I haven't tried it and so I don't know to trust the download. Do you think it's alright?:

http://www.wildbits.com/tunatic/

Now these two, these are web-based systems. This here Midomi site promises to take your sorrowful ill-begotten singing or humming from your mic in order to determine the name of the tune. I dunno. I haven't tried it yet.

http://www.midomi.com/

This one I did try. For The Adventurous, Musipedia offers a Flash-based keyboard and a javascript keyboard.

http://www.musipedia.org/

Simply enter the notes in either Keyboard search either by using the mouse on the keyboard screen (remember to enable the mouseover control so you can hear the note) or by inserting your own MIDI keyboard.
The manual version includes manual selection of the note by time duration, to make a perfect audio replica, as well as a Contour Search (for Advanced Users, no doubt) but is more of a shot in the dark.

I did not find "Red Red Wine" this way. I actually finally remembered it by name. Musipedia returned several symphonies instead.

I did deliberately try entering the tune for "Hey Jude" and the program pulled up several several symphonies as well as The Beatles, so I still dunno...you can try the mic here as well and just whistle.

Do you know of any good ones? Post them here!

lionheart88 · Aug 5, 2012

Soundhound works great if you have an iphone, ipod, ipad, etc...

http://www.soundhound.com/

Isaac Sauvage · Aug 6, 2012

i've noticed that for whatever reason, sleepy, time and time again you prefer to completely ignore whatever i attempt to contribute to an issue while literally thanking the poster right above me and the poster directly following me. so understand that over time that kind of thing can get downright demotivating, particularly since i've always tried to send the thanks your way for your own good deeds and good works.

but still, this kind of thing has particularly rankled when i've tried to give life to various topics of yours in the spirit of 'let's have a nice community topic' so that we can all enjoy bullshitting a fun subject in the interest of... whatever, having a pleasant time, i guess. this is what i've typically aimed for, btw. i dearly appreciate fun, interesting topics in which we can all share the good stories and information, so to speak. ah well... whatever.

here's what i can contribute this time:

soundhound and shazam are both excellent resources and are also available on the common mobile format, i.e. android. i.e., you don't need an apple-specific product to have benefit of them.

via the web, try these excellent resources:
musipedia.org
peachnote.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_by_humming

this stuff has definitely been of immense help to myself. favorite moments involved walking down the local supermarket floor, hearing nothing but muzak drivel for 20+ minutes until suddenly a cool 70's-80's-90's song inexplicably pops up and i immediately pull out my smartphone, choose the app, thrust it skyward, and suddenly i'm in the know. like a musical gift from god, or something.

sleepy · Aug 7, 2012

No Ike. I value your presence and contributions at PN and I rarely forget due credit. It could be because I think of you as a participant instead of a Hello Stranger, but really, Lionheart was here first.

I do skip game threads a lot and I am not as deep on other subjects except for the immediate positive or negative impact of the topic. Intellectually speaking, I can be very dense sometimes. And I do lose track of threads due to life issues.

All the same Ike, I apologize for any slights. I never mean to ignore good people.

EDIT: Where is that "The History of Visual Pinball" thread again? I started a "How did you find out about Visual Pinball" thread at vpforums and commented in that thread about your (very excellent) history project, which is also why I started the Where Is/Was The History of VP?" thread, between that and my foggy memory. :)

sleepy · Aug 7, 2012

Yeah, muzak at the store and there was a song that I did not know at all.
It would pop in at K-Mart and so I would strain to hear at least one unique line of lyric, memorize it, get back home, and Google ("the lyric line" + Lyric) in the Google box, but had no luck at all.

About two months ago I was at Taco Bell and That Song popped up (I Thought), but this time I could hear the words, memorized a line, went back home, Googled it in quotes,
and it was "More Than Words" by the group Extreme. Never heard of 'em.

But that wasn't the same song as the one at K-Mart, though it was the same style.
The song at K-Mart was a western walking slow swing blues tune, sounding very "Everly Brothers" in the vocals just like Extreme, but the line that *I think I heard* was "it..does..n't mean a thing"

So there I'm thinking it might be another by Extreme, though I have never heard Brooks and Dunn or others from the early 90's. I only remember the hype.
Could be anyone.

Isaac Sauvage · Mar 4, 2021

sleepy said:
No Ike. I value your presence and contributions at PN and I rarely forget due credit. It could be because I think of you as a participant instead of a Hello Stranger, but really, Lionheart was here first.
...
All the same Ike, I apologize for any slights. I never mean to ignore good people.

EDIT: Where is that "The History of Visual Pinball" thread again? I started a "How did you find out about Visual Pinball" thread at vpforums and commented in that thread about your (very excellent) history project, which is also why I started the Where Is/Was The History of VP?" thread, between that and my foggy memory. :)

oof...

Now this might sound kinda weird, but I really like threads like these that tend to highlight my shortcomings (and petty rudeness) across the years.

As in, YES that was me above, and for sure, I do remember getting nonsensically outraged upon this or that, then taking it out on @sleepy, and whoever else.

I'd certainly like to see it as part of a growing up-period, but who really knows, eh?

Okay, I guess I don't have a super-smart point to make here (what a surprise!), but hopefully you might enjoy this one...? (I do love it)