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Author:  David Luebbert Posted:  6/3/03; 8:36:24 AM Msg#:  3738 (top msg in thread) Prev/Next:  3737/3739 Reads:  9239

Whistling for Melodyhound

I was browsing through online computer science papers last night in the Association for Computing Machinery website's Digital Library and found a description of an online service which allows you to search for the title of a piece if you are able to write down a search string which describes the motion of notes at the beginning of a melody (up, down, or repeat). A Google search for a site with those capabilities led me to Melodyhound at www.name-this-tune.com 

The notation used to express the search string, Parsons Code, always starts with a '*' symbol to represent the first pitch in the melody. Then for each succesive note in the melody, 'U' encodes a pitch that moves up, 'D' encodes a pitch that moves down, and 'R' encodes a pitch that repeats the pitch used for the previous melody note. Rhythm and rests are ignored in the encoding.

For example, the first two phrases  of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony First Movement would have the Parson encoding of "*RRDURRD". A Parson code for the first eight bars of Jerome Kern's All The Things You Are would be "*UDDRRRRUDDRRRRUDD". If you do a Melodyhound search using the Beethoven's Fifth encoding, it finds 14 melodies that begin with the same pattern of  melodic motion, with the first theme of the Fifth Symphony listed as the ninth candidate. If you use the lengthy All The Things You Are encoding for a search, the search tells you that All The Things You Are is the only match.

The citation that pointed me towards Melodyhound described a section of the site which is able to produce a Parson Code for a melody that a user whistles. Once users have whistled up a Parson Code for their melody, they can use that as their search string and find likely candidate melodies that are similar to what they whistled.

I haven't tried the whistle-it interface yet, but it looks like there is a Java applet that allows you to set parameters for the whistle capture and which listens to your whistling to produce the Parson Code for it.

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