

Songtapper - Tap spacebar to tune: It knows song - edw519
http://www.songtapper.com/s/tappingmain.bin?dotap=1

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paulgb
Here is a paper describing how it works:
<http://cgi.sfu.ca/~gpeters/tapper/AAAI054PetersG.pdf> .

Basically, they start with the durations between each note, normalize for
differences in tempo, and then create a string that for each note indicates
whether the duration goes up, down, or stays the same between each note. Then
find the edit distance between that string, and the strings in the database
for each song.

You might have to read that a dozen or so times to make any sense of it, but
it beats reading the paper if you have work to get done.

If you want to look into it further,
<http://cgi.sfu.ca/~gpeters/tapper/tapper.cgi> .

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SwellJoe
This simply can't work for anything other than very simple tunes. Rhythm is
less than half of the picture in any modern piece of music, and there are a
few basic patterns that repeat across hundreds or thousands of songs.

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dejb
Nice idea. Shame it doesn't work. Something where users could sing or hum the
tune could actually work though. A true 'musical' search engine. I had this
idea years ago but I think the implementation would be really hard.

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yters
Sintresting.

Wouldn't it be cool if there were a program that could turn your hums and
tappings into musical instruments? Everyone could be a musical maestro!

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jcl
I've heard this idea from multiple places, so I expect it's one of those ideas
that is easy to think of but difficult to implement. A similar idea was
expressed in the plot of The Music Man, where children are taught to play
instruments by imagining that they are whistling.

I wouldn't be surprised if the main implementation problem is that many people
are naturally off-key when whistling or humming, and those on-key know the
notes well enough that it is more efficient to simply enter music via a piano-
like keyboard.

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zo
Couldn't get Smoke on the Water? Psh...

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wlievens
I tried the start of Highway To Hell - very recognisable - and it gave me some
Whitney Houston options or something.

Is this thing just random?

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watmough
Terrible.

Didn't get Yes, ACDC or Stevie Wonder.

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paul_reiners
It got "Hey Jude". At least, that was the 2nd of the possibilities it
mentioned.

I think that's kind of amazing.

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nonrecursive
Needs more Bowie! Didn't get "Modern Love"

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ivankirigin
Got "Down Town" by Emma Bunton on the first try. Didn't get "Exit music for a
film", by Radiohead.

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nickb
I tried three diff songs, it failed on all of them. It even failed on "Happy
Birthday..."

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edw519
It got Happy Birthday and the Star Spangled Banner.

Couldn't get InaGaddaDaVida.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Aha, it's the Eliza trick: if you can look smart for the first fifteen
seconds, many people will conclude that you're smart.

One wonders what percentage of people pick one of those two songs to try
first. (I'm guessing that several other popular choices, like, say, "America,
the Beautiful" and "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", are also pretty easy for
the program to pick out.)

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mhb
Apparently not "Row, row, row your boat" though.

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jazj
Saw this years back, tried it again just now to see if they got it to work by
now.

It thought the VU's "Sunday Morning" was Guardiani Del Destino's "Rhapsody"
(and their "Rock & Roll" was Sonata Arctica's "Weballergy"), the head of
Coltrane's "Giant Steps" was Shakira's "Whenever Wherevr", CSN's "Suite: Judy
Blue Eyes" was "A New York Fairytale", Jethro Tull's "Aqualung" was "If Ever I
Would Leave You", The Clash's "Atom Tan" was Mental as Anything's "Live it
Up", and The Police's "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" was Toquinho's "Aquarela".
FAIL.

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ajkirwin
Simply terrible.

It couldn't even pick out the highly recognizable beat of that old favourite,
Axel F!

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tjr
Heh, Axel F was the second song I tried, and it recognized it.

Did you add the song after tapping it?

