I was reading the Anybody know this tune? thread, started by Chefguy, and watched its sad destiny. And I was thinking… one of the uses of this boards are to identify movies, songs, etc., but what can we do when we have a tune in our heads and we really want to know its basic info?
My first bet is to create a simple midi file and upload it in the web, putting a link to it for someone to hear it… I did it once, and I turned the midi to a little mp3 (no one recognized the tune, anyway). But not everyone has the time, or the ability, or the software (or not interested) in midi creation, so whistling or humming the melody, recording it in an wav ->mp3 will be fine, too, performing the same operation than the midi file…
Can we make up a fast and practical method for tune transmission, so we can help each other avoiding the risk of “trolling”?
Well I don’t know about this particular board, but I remember seeing on the Discovery channel about a website that was being developed to where all you had to do was hum the song into your computers microphone and then the website would come up with the most likely possible matches. It was pretty damn cool to say the least.
However, in the mean time what I normaly do is get on google; I’ve found that even if you know just a couple of the words to a song (especialy to an obscure one) that something will pop up to send you in the right direction. (it takes a little work) and if that fails I ask my doper friends to help me out.
I almost posted a similar thread just the other day.
The site that SHAKES refers to is one I have visited, but can’t remember its name. Best I can recall, it’s a British site.
There’s another technique (whose name I also forget and therefore can’t Google for) where the tune (wordless even) can be classified by a series of letters meaning:
U – pitch goes up
D – pitch goes down
S – pitch stays the same
Even if the amount of upness or downness isn’t specified, and could be anywhere from a half-step to an octave or better, after enough playing around with the pattern, it becomes easier to narrow down what the tune must be. I think whatever site this was on mentioned that it might take a fairly long string to zoom in on the specific tune in question.
Okay, that one was easy. Just to demonstrate the idea. Try one of your own to see how many letters it takes to get the “identifiable” portion of your own tune across.
As I say, I wish I could remember either the name of that technique or the website where I saw it, since there was a much better description of how it is used by musicologists to classify tunes with that method.
We’ve discussed rough-and-ready notation before, and not come up with a good solution yet. For those who can whistle into a microphone, then upload the file somewhere, that’s of course best. For the rest – obviously musicians have an advantage, because they can name the notes. (Even if not in the correct key, just pick a key, and keep the relative intervals correct.) I didn’t get Jingle Bells above, but I would have if it had been notated EEE EEE EGCDE.
That’s another helpful convention - spacing to give an idea of the rhythm. How’s this:
ss u d u d ds u d u d
ds u d d d d us d d u d
I have to admit that notation is somewhat annoying to me, trying to puzzle it out without the proper intervals indicated, but perhaps it’s a little better than “You know, that song that goes bum-lalalala-ta-ra-BUM, then a drum solo…”
All right, let me help you guys out of your misery.
The site you’re looking for is Melodyhound. One of the techniques used is the Parsons code, the one with the U D R (repeat) description of tunes. It is not meant for humans but solely for computer search of tunes.
I claim no special knowledge with finding this site; I learned of its existence on this very board.
If you know standard musical notation you can give the pitches using the standard letters (e.g. C, C#, D, Eb…). The only problems to solve are note duration, and whether the pitch is going up or down.
For the duration, pick the shortest note and fill the longer notes with a beat marker “.”. Bar dividers can be “|”. For example, Happy Birthday is:
Here, a “-” means repeat the note. An upper case letter means go up in pitch, and lower case means go down in pitch.
Note that “bb” is ambiguous - it could mean go down to a B-flat, or it could mean a two octave drop with B-naturals, but how many tunes would have that? I decided to live with the problem of two-letter pitches. The alternative is to go to 2 lines, or use other letters (e.g. B=Bb, H=B natural).
Actually, Chefguy, I was refering to the thread you started. We don’t hate you (at least, not me). Of course you’re important, but not that much. In fact, some little mistakes open the doors to new discoverings.
I understood very well what the problem was. I have a tune in my head, I want to identify it and I see this forums are full of people who knows this or that. So, I try a simple way to send them the tune and… fall in the pits of trolling.
This thread is honestly exploring the best way to solve the problem.
I don’t know if this would help non-musicians, but you could use numbers instead of notes, if you don’t know the note names. 1 would be the tonic, or “home” pitch, and then you go up the scale - 1,2,3,4, etc.
Mary Had a Little Lamb = 3 2 1 2 3 3 3 2 2 2 3 5 5…
bass line to Louie Louie = 111 44 555 44…
Eine Kleine Nachtmusic = 1 51 515135…
Probably doesn’t help if you don’t know which note is the tonic or how to sing a scale, but just an idea.
So, Grousser, anything float your boat yet? Any of these ideas appeal to you?
Where did you hear your tune, BTW?
I have one I heard our high school band play many long years ago, and I believe it was called “We Go For Bop” or something like that. I’m almost sure the band director wrote it and it may never have gotten out of Robert E. Lee High School’s possession. I’d love to know how close the tune in my head is to what the band played. And no, I wasn’t in the band.
I posted it in this thread about a month ago. My link didn’t work, and lno hosted it for me. It didn’t work. Nobody catched up the piece. Maybe I didn’t play it well or the instruments I used were not correct.
