How can you find a tune by melody input?

Answer 1

Query by Melody Input Music Search Engines .

The concept
"Name that tune" is a popular forum question (apart form also being a game show). Forum members are asking other members to help in finding the title or artist of a song. In most cases that song is described by part of its lyrics or other information. In other cases an audio file or a video of the wanted song is provided. "Melody finding" is useful for such cases. Apart from "name that tune" and "melody finding" other names used are melody search", "melody retrieval", "regcognize melody", "identify melody", "find tune by melody", "find song by melody" etc.

This concept of "melody finding" with "melody finders" is often confused with "Music search", "song search" or "tune search", the more generally used search for music. "Music earch engines" are based upon text search only. The user enters a (part of a) title, the name of an artist in order to find the tune that contains that phrase in its related information. In a similar way "Lyric search engines" are used to find a song by entering part of the song text and "MIDI search engines" to find a MIDI audio file with the entered text phrase in its title. Some "Melody finders" , although primarily designed to search for melodies, also have an option for text search.

The interface
Melody finders differ in their interfaces, that is in the way users have to enter the input query of a melody. This can be done by:

1. singing, whistling of humming the melody into a microphone connected to the PC

2. playng the melody on an a virtual piano keyboard

3. typing text of notes or codes.
Notes are described in different forms, although usually as C, C#, D, D#, E etc.
For codes usually the Parsons Code is used. It desdcribes the consecutive notes of a melody as a series of "going higher / going lower / the note is repeated" by using the codes u = Up, d = Down or r = repeat.

4. tapping the rhythm of the melody on the keyboard of the PC

5. pointing a mobile at the music to record it, followed by phoning a service to receive the title.

For most users (1) singing, whistling of humming a melody will be easier than (2) playing it on a pianokeyboard.
On the other hand (1) is likely to cause more input errors than (2)
(3) Codes and certainly note discriptions are mainly if not only useful for musically trained users.
(4) Tapping rhythm will be easy for most users, but is providing more limited information.

On line Melody Finders
Currently (october 2009) there are at least 17 melody finders available on line. Below they are classified according to their interface. Some systems use more interfaces and one system even four different ones.

1. Singing, whistling of humming

· Musicline.de (Melodiesuche)

· Midomi
· Musipedia

· Name My Tune: (users recognizing song input of other users)

· Sloud:
· Tunebot music search

2. Piano keyboard

· C-Brahms Retrieval Engine for Melody Searching

· Folk Tune Finder (demo)

· MelodyCacther

· Musipedia

· New Zealand Digital Library (Meldex

· Tunebot music search

3 Text like Notes or codes.

· DoDoSoSo (notes)

· JC's ABC Tune Finder (ABC notation)

· Musipedia: (both notes and codes)

· SID theme search engine: (notes)

· Themefinder: (both notes and codes)

· Tunespotting: (notes and Keyboard PC)

· Parfait Olé: (notes)

4 Tapping Rhythm

· Musipedia

· Songtapper

5 Mobile recording

· Shazam

Matching system and Accuracy

• Most systems use complex matching techniques, mainly to extract a melody out of polyphonic melodies. The ultimate purpose of such techniques is to make accessible for melody finding all on line music. Although this purpose is ideal, so far the accuracy of these techniques still is disappointing. Some systems try to improve accuracy by also using note duration as input information.
• The accuracy of matching based upon the Parsons contour like in Musipedia and Themefinder is good but remains somewhat uncomplete.
• The accuracy of matching based upon rhythm only, like in Musipedia and Song Tapper, is reasonable, certainly in relation with the limited input information.
• Systems based upon "audio fingerprinting", a technique to identify recordings, like Midomi and Shazam, are accurate, but results of such a technique are limited to the original records of a melody and are of no use for melodies recorded in any other way.
• The matching technique of the MelodyCatcher, based upon a highly refined and yet error tolerant contour algorithm is highly accurate. The advantage of such a high accuracy is that the wanted melody, as long as available in the database, usually will appear in top of the results, while other melodies resulting from one and the same --usually shorter - query are far more similar than in less accurate systems.

The database
Results of almost all systems are based upon the systems own database. Most of these databases contain less than 20.00 melodies. The database of Name My Tunes only contains input sung by other users.
Larger database are those of Folk Tune Finder, MelodyCacther, Midomi and Musipedia. Some databases are mainly or only focused on Classical Music like C-Brahms Retrieval Engine, Parfet Olé and the large database of Themefinder. The Folk tune finder is meant for Follk music only.

Two systems also search the Web: Musipedia and MelodyCatcher although the latter with more accurate results. Since the results of the MelodyCatcer show MIDI files and links to their sources, this melody finder can also be used for MIDI search by melody input. The system also has an option for text search.