# Is there a way to search for musical notes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 22, 2010, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041 "2010-08-22T04:57:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2010, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041/1 "2010-08-22T04:57:44Z")
There is a beautiful Chinese melody I’ve heard that I’d like to view on YouTube, or get lyrics translated, but _I don’t know the song’s name_! (I injected this question into a Cafe Society thread, but with no response.) I’ve tried to transcribe the song’s initial notes below, but be aware that (1) this is from memory and my musical ear is very untrained, (2) I don’t know what key the song would usually be played in. I’ve made longer notes upper-case, and _added a '-mark after notes below C_. Here’s the initial part of the melody: ccdeca’G’CdecA’ccdEegAagageDcca’DDdcEcCageca’C Immediately after this initial part, the melody goes up an octave and becomes more beautiful. I’ve not tried to transcribe further because of the increasing risk of error, and because anyone who knows the song can probably recognize it from the notes above. ---
**Author:** ![randomstar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@randomstar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/randomstar)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2010, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041/2 "2010-08-22T06:08:17Z")
Are you thinking of [_Sukiyaki_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XFljKSIR20&feature=related)? Also, the original is not in Chinese, but in Japanese (_Ue o muite arukō_). More information available at Wikipedia. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2010, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041/3 "2010-08-22T06:42:05Z")
> [@randomstar](#): > > Are you thinking of [_Sukiyaki_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XFljKSIR20&feature=related)? Thank you! Yes. Thank you! Your link won’t be my favorite rendition, but I’ll enjoy Googling and YouTubing for more. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2010, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041/4 "2010-08-22T21:13:36Z")
> [@randomstar](#): > > Are you thinking of [_Sukiyaki_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XFljKSIR20&feature=related)? > > Also, the original is not in Chinese, but in Japanese (_Ue o muite arukō_). More information available at Wikipedia. Wow, nice. The SDMB should start a music ID service. ---
**Author:** ![not\_alice](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/not_alice/32/7283_2.png) [@not\_alice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/not_alice)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2010, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041/5 "2010-08-22T21:15:19Z")
That’s fucking amazing! ---
**Author:** ![Damfino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Damfino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damfino)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041/6 "2010-08-23T19:49:34Z")
Quite some time ago (70s) a method was described for searching for tunes. The first note was an asterisk, the subsequent notes were R (repeat), U (up), D (down) depending on their relation to the preceding note. About 12 to 16 notes would be sufficient to identify a tune. No knowledge of keys or octaves necessary. I’ve no idea if this method ever took off or is in current practice, however. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041/7 "2010-08-24T00:08:59Z")
> [@Damfino](#): > > Quite some time ago (70s) a method was described for searching for tunes. The first note was an asterisk, the subsequent notes were R (repeat), U (up), D (down) depending on their relation to the preceding note. About 12 to 16 notes would be sufficient to identify a tune. No knowledge of keys or octaves necessary. I’ve no idea if this method ever took off or is in current practice, however. Some [music search things](http://www.musipedia.org/melodic_contour.html) use it. ---
**Author:** ![Autolycus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041/8 "2010-08-24T06:36:02Z")
Kyu Sakamoto (the singer of the original melody), is one of my favorite Japanese singers. His tragic death in a plane crash was, well, tragic. Why the name change from ‘Ue wo muite arukou’ [let’s walk looking up] to ‘Sukiyaki’ [a type of meat hotpot], I’ll never know. It would be like renaming ‘Moon River’ to ‘Double Cheeseburger.’ ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041/9 "2010-08-24T08:52:44Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > Some [music search things](http://www.musipedia.org/melodic_contour.html) use it. I tried that site (just now, not pre-thread), starting with RUUDDDUUUDDURUURUURDUDDDDRD and then RUUDDDUUUDDURUURUURDUDDDDRDURRDUDRUDDDDU and got oodles of results, beginning with Fleetwood Mac the Chain and a Bach. _ **All displayed results on first page** _ had Buy-MP3 icons next to them! I didn’t wade through the scores of responses on additional pages; maybe the one I wanted was there, but the site couldn’t find a Buy-MP3 icon for it. BTW, I was unable to use Ctrl-V to paste into that site’s form, and had to retype by hand. Why? > [@Autolycus](#): > > Kyu Sakamoto (the singer of the original melody), is one of my favorite Japanese singers. His tragic death in a plane crash was, well, tragic. Why the name change from ‘Ue wo muite arukou’ [let’s walk looking up] to ‘Sukiyaki’ [a type of meat hotpot], I’ll never know. It would be like renaming ‘Moon River’ to ‘Double Cheeseburger.’ The meter’s no good. How about Cheeeeeeeese burger With o-onions and fries! I’m craving that for lunch… … Todayyyy! … and, speaking of the name change, as I mentioned earlier the song is on Thai TV now with words changed to commercial for MK restaurants! :eek: ::eek:: ---
**Author:** ![Autolycus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041/10 "2010-08-24T09:05:12Z")
> [@Autolycus](#): > > Why the name change from ‘Ue wo muite arukou’ [let’s walk looking up] to ‘Sukiyaki’ [a type of meat hotpot], I’ll never know. It would be like renaming ‘Moon River’ to ‘Double Cheeseburger.’ [QUOTE=septimus] The meter’s no good. How about: Cheeeeeeeese burger With o-onions and fries! I’m craving that for lunch… … Todayyyy! [/quote] Brilliant! I’m totally singing that version next time I do karaoke. ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041/11 "2010-08-24T13:29:05Z")
There are a number of sites that do song matching based on a recorded or hummed snippet of music - basically they do a Fast Fourier Transform on the input and sample it to get a profile similar to the one used above - this is then compared to the song corpus. A guy wrote some demo code and got a cease-and-desist letter from a major music search site. I’m guessing he was on the right track. Si ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041/12 "2010-08-24T16:07:24Z")
\*\*tomndebb \*\*[posted in another thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12830387&postcount=3) a link to “[How to Identify Songs Using Melody](http://www.wikihow.com/Identify-Songs-Using-Melody)”. I just got the name to “Lover’s Concerto” without being able to decipher a single lyric, just by typing in the first 4 measures. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041/13 "2010-08-25T08:21:17Z")
My mystery melody has been solved, thanks to **randomstar** , but searching for melodies seems like it might be fun. > [@needscoffee](#): > > \*\*tomndebb \*\*[posted in another thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12830387&postcount=3) a link to “[How to Identify Songs Using Melody](http://www.wikihow.com/Identify-Songs-Using-Melody)”. I just got the name to “Lover’s Concerto” without being able to decipher a single lyric, just by typing in the first 4 measures. Which link did you use? Your posted link links to a list of links. I tried four of them in the keyboard/mouse categories; two ended up back at useless _musipedia_; two resulted in “Not responding” pages. Musipedia’s top choice now was _Nobuo Uematsu: Final Fantasy VII Main Theme_ but, despite the Japanese connection, it didn’t sound like my melody at all. I hope the algorithm is “fuzzy” enough to cope with minor keying errors by me. I might enjoy experimenting on that question, but first I’d need ONE website which actually works! Because I have poor Google-fu, and am easily annoyed, I prefer ONE good link over a list of links of uneven quality. (I don’t know if the “Not responding”'s were due to their viruses conflicting with my own viruses/antiviruses, or what. Perhaps it was Fujacks-infected .exe’s needed by Java (though one might then hope for an explicit error message), which I’d removed hoping to treat my Fujacks. Fujacks, like herpes, is hard to eradicate but I’ve had several consecutive clean scans by Ad-aware now – keep fingers crossed. (Sorry for the Fujack hijack, which belongs in another thread, presumably in BBQ Pit.)) ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041/14 "2010-08-26T05:15:02Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > My mystery melody has been solved, thanks to **randomstar** , but searching for melodies seems like it might be fun. > > > [@needscoffee](#): > > > > \*\*tomndebb \*\*[posted in another thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12830387&postcount=3) a link to “[How to Identify Songs Using Melody](http://www.wikihow.com/Identify-Songs-Using-Melody)”. I just got the name to “Lover’s Concerto” without being able to decipher a single lyric, just by typing in the first 4 measures. > > Which link did you use? Your posted link links to a list of links. I tried four of them in the keyboard/mouse categories; two ended up back at useless _musipedia_; two resulted in “Not responding” pages. Musipedia’s top choice now was _Nobuo Uematsu: Final Fantasy VII Main Theme_ but, despite the Japanese connection, it didn’t sound like my melody at all. > > I hope the algorithm is “fuzzy” enough to cope with minor keying errors by me. I might enjoy experimenting on that question, but first I’d need ONE website which actually works! > > Because I have poor Google-fu, and am easily annoyed, I prefer ONE good link over a list of links of uneven quality. > > (I don’t know if the “Not responding”'s were due to their viruses conflicting with my own viruses/antiviruses, or what. Perhaps it was Fujacks-infected .exe’s needed by Java (though one might then hope for an explicit error message), which I’d removed hoping to treat my Fujacks. Fujacks, like herpes, is hard to eradicate but I’ve had several consecutive clean scans by Ad-aware now – keep fingers crossed. (Sorry for the Fujack hijack, which belongs in another thread, presumably in BBQ Pit.)) I found my song using the virtual keyboard at [http://www.melodycatcher.com/](http://www.melodycatcher.com/) ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-musical-notes/551041/15 "2010-08-26T09:13:41Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > I found my song using the virtual keyboard at [http://www.melodycatcher.com/](http://www.melodycatcher.com/) Thank you. This was one I tried, and trying again it still freezes. My guess is it needs the Java .exe I quarantined because it was Fujacks-infected. Yes, my machine needs some repair work, but it’s low-priority because it still does almost all of what I use it for.