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Song stuck in your head? Just hum to search (2020)

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Re: Song stuck in your head? Just hum to search (2020)

#91

Post by zerocrates »

ethanbond wrote: post #11
sharkweek wrote: post #6

I gotta say, as dumb as this sounds, there is almost nothing more satisfying than having an unidentified song stuck in your head and then after hours/days/years figuring out what it is. Vivid memory from when I was in middle school (before internet search was common) having a song tune stuck in my head for years that I couldn’t identify. Finally years later I heard it on the radio randomly and it was like scratching…

You’re gonna love this: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx

What's actually crazy is how relatively non-"lost" it really was. Once you know what it's called you can go find it on Amazon, and there's reviews from 2000 still just sitting there; it's probably been on sale this whole time. Someone put it up on YouTube in 2010.

It's funny how something can be so available and yet inaccessible at the same time. Reminds me a little of Borges' Library of Babel: what you want is there, but what does it matter if you can't find it?

Re: Song stuck in your head? Just hum to search (2020)

#92

Post by NobodyNada »

rjh29 wrote: post #88
loxias wrote: post #75

Holy crap! "Brahms - Piano trio No 1 in B major" FINALLY. That's been more than half a year in my head, and me failing to figure out how to search for it. Proud of myself I nailed the key. Does this song have some romance story behind it? Probably just my brain confusing nearby neurons. Extraordinarily frustrating that it needs a mobile device (as opposed to, say, even Chrome only). Still, thanks internet. Now I'm ba…

People who aren't pitch perfect will rarely sing a song it its original key, so Google likely handle that.

While I imagine Google probably does handle transpositions, people do tend to remember the pitch of a song, even if they don't have perfect pitch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch#Pitch_memory_re...

> While very few people have the ability to name a pitch with no external reference, pitch memory can be activated by repeated exposure. People who are not skilled singers will often sing popular songs in the correct key, and can usually recognize when TV themes have been shifted into the wrong key.

Re: Song stuck in your head? Just hum to search (2020)

#93

Post by londons_explore »

Just tested it. I hummed 'Frère Jacques, frère Jacques Dormez-vous ?', a common nursery rhyme in english-speaking UK, despite being french and not many people here speak French well.

However, Google gave me 3 results, none of which were in either English or French. They were Spanish and Italian (I think!), and both had the correct tune, but weren't what I was looking for.

I wonder if the search engine could better handle this case by recognising cases where lots of songs use the same tune, and showing results for the ones which are most popular in the region the searcher is searching from?

Re: Song stuck in your head? Just hum to search (2020)

#95

Post by bobbiechen »

loxias wrote: post #75

Holy crap! "Brahms - Piano trio No 1 in B major" FINALLY. That's been more than half a year in my head, and me failing to figure out how to search for it. Proud of myself I nailed the key. Does this song have some romance story behind it? Probably just my brain confusing nearby neurons. Extraordinarily frustrating that it needs a mobile device (as opposed to, say, even Chrome only). Still, thanks internet. Now I'm ba…

For a lot of classical music, you can get very good results just using the Parsons code (sometimes called melodic contour): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsons_code

Worth a shot if hum to search doesn't work!

Re: Song stuck in your head? Just hum to search (2020)

#97

Post by loxias »

bobbiechen wrote: post #95
loxias wrote: post #75

Holy crap! "Brahms - Piano trio No 1 in B major" FINALLY. That's been more than half a year in my head, and me failing to figure out how to search for it. Proud of myself I nailed the key. Does this song have some romance story behind it? Probably just my brain confusing nearby neurons. Extraordinarily frustrating that it needs a mobile device (as opposed to, say, even Chrome only). Still, thanks internet. Now I'm ba…

For a lot of classical music, you can get very good results just using the Parsons code (sometimes called melodic contour): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsons_code Worth a shot if hum to search doesn't work!

Thanks for this! I'm... embarrassed not to have heard of this before.

Sure enough, I typed "*UUUUDDDDUDRUUUUDDDUDDDUDD" into musipedia.org and BOOM. Result!

Re: Song stuck in your head? Just hum to search (2020)

#98

Post by profsummergig »

cellis wrote: post #37

Tried it with a childhood song/tune that I might have heard at 8 or 9 ( maybe 10 or 11) that is otherwise forever lost to history for me and while it did find matches, they weren't the song.

Record your humming. Post it online. Ask the sub-reddit someone mentioned (tipofmytongue). Don't lose it to history. Have managed to recover a few songs from my childhood this way. Like someone else mentioned, it's one of the most satisfying things.
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