SoundHound and Shazam

So these apps say "You can sing or hum to find the song in your head!" or somesuchsillynessasallthat. Well, I had a riff stuck in my head. Acoustic guitar. So's I says to myself "Hey, idiot, if you can sing or hum or play the radio, sure as peaches is poison you can play the guitar for it, right?"

WRONG.

No dice. I even tried Stairway, Dust in the Wind, and Sweet Home Alabama as controls. No bloody dice.

Point of this thread? To find out if anyone else had better luck with 'em than I did. Cause as it stands right now, they're not worth the data it took to download them. Though it was fun playing around to see if I could get them to recognize a tune. So far, nothing I've played has been recognized.

Oh, by the way, after playing it over and over, I remembered the riff--It's Stan Rogers, Mary Ellen Carter.

I'm no expert, but AFAIK:

The AI for analyzing digital audio as if it were a fingerprint, filtering out noise and distortion, etc to ID a unique chunk of an existing recording is pretty advanced now... which is why Shazam works so well if you're feeding it a recording of a song that's commercially available... but research around ananlyzing the actual structure of a piece of music, it's notes, chords, rhythms, verses, choruses etc and trying to ID it against a database of exisinting scores/transcriptions/etc... lags decades behind.

If there isn't an app that can accurately transcribe what you're strumming on guitar in near real time (there isn't right? a really good one, at least?), then any service aiming to take that automatic transcription and ID it against an existing database is gonna be less-than-awesome, I'd suspect.

That said, as soon as enemies of the state start communicating with each other via guitar licks or harmonica solos, you can bet this type of app you seek will suddenly get really good :)

That's the thing, the songs I picked are all just acoustic pieces (or intros) that if played properly should sound the same regardless of if I'm playing it from a CD, YouTube, Tapedeck, Record, or on one of my guitars.

That's the part that gets me. But eh, it's whatever. If I'm out and about and a song comes on I need to know what it is, I just google "What song is playing right now" and let Google do the work for me, no need to download an app.

do you really want the machines to get any smarter? FIrst they start ecognizing songs, then its all "Hello, Dave."

Again, I'm no expert, but what sounds identical to a human, might not look the same to a stack of cloud services performing things like fourier analysis, etc. See fingerprint analogy, it's not the same recording/processing chain, even if it's damn close... but I'm with you in the sense that, if you totally nail the part, it's a major disappointment for a service claiming to be able to name that song to still fail.

"I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that." And that's why I believe "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind," (from the O.C. Bible, after the Butlerian Jihad--pretty excited for Dune 2020).

As to nailing the part, the apps claim you can "hum a few bars" and it'll tell you what song it is. So being able to strum a few, as it were...

Anyroad, that's my 2 pence worth on it.

maybe the system you tried is optimized for humming? constraining to the limited, monophonic instrument that is the human voice is probably a lot less complex than the 1-6 notes at a time that a guitar can produce. Did you try humming first?

There are a lot of "thou shalt not" commandments that people violate everyday... just sayin'...

"I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that." And that's why I believe "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind," (from the O.C. Bible, after the Butlerian Jihad--pretty excited for Dune 2020).

you and me both.... and damnit, Shazam and Soundhound, not everyone is named Dave, now open the fucking air-lock!

(from the O.C. Bible, after the Butlerian Jihad--pretty excited for Dune 2020).

Same here. Every week, I search for Dune 2020 news like it's the secret to life itself... I didn't even know who this Timmy Chalamet was until he put on a stillsuit... that said, the Butlerian Jihad is still roughly 14,000 years away, according to the Dune Encylopedia timeline... and given that machines can't yet tell you what pop song you're humming... that sounds about right...

maybe the system you tried is optimized for humming? constraining to the limited, monophonic instrument that is the human voice is probably a lot less complex than the 1-6 notes at a time that a guitar can produce. Did you try humming first?

I can think of a lot of humans who can't pick apart a song polyphonically LOL mostly guitarists of course.... and of course most 'normal' people can't

You're asking HAL to do something that's 'more human than human' LOL

You're asking HAL to do something that's 'more human than human' LOL

Ha! Fair points... most people can't name every chord by ear (including me), but who here among us couldn't ID the opening to Stairway?