13 ms·

Hum to Search Song

524 points by kodisha 6y ago

arthurcolle 6y ago
I was just talking about this a few days ago! This is so cool. I've been looking for an 80s duet for the last 10 years with no luck.
- BookPage 6y ago
  Welllll..... did it work?
bestest 6y ago
Finally someone did this. I've got a million songs in my head that I'm humming not knowing what songs these are. And I was dreaming of being able to simply hum a melody to something shazam-like and get a result.
- jakereps 6y ago
  I’m fairly sure SoundHound has had this feature since the early 2010s. Haven’t heard of the app since, but apparently their site is still up. I think Shazam ended up winning the music ID race as I remember having both apps.
  - etbebl 6y ago
    Yup, SoundHound existed, and before that, Midomi.
    - fireattack 6y ago
      For some reason, I can never remember the name of this service despite its simplicity.
artingent 6y ago
This is a killer feature. Good job, Google!
strombofulous 6y ago
Hasn't this existed in Google assistant for a long time? Or does that only match the song itself (playing on the radio/store speaker/...)
- Groxx 6y ago
  The long-available one is similar to how siri / shazam / etc work - it only detects the actual song. I forget how the audio fingerprinting works (probably varies by system anyway), but they tend to be pretty picky and very sensitive to small timing or frequency changes on "interesting" audio points. E.g. even quite-true-to-the-original covers often fail to find matches for me.
sailfast 6y ago
Been trying to find this in the iOS app but not having any luck. Did I miss something in the article?
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  Works for me in the iOS app. Tap the microphone in the search box, then tap Search a Song.
  - unityByFreedom 6y ago
    There's no Search a Song button for me. I just updated the app... edit: works for me now. After a few minutes the button just started showing up
    - chrisfrantz 6y ago
      Ditto over here, just updated and search a song is nowhere to be found.
      - fastball 6y ago
        I logged out of my Google account in the app (well switched to "use this app without account") and it started working.
  - codetrotter 6y ago
    I was confused too at first. Installed the app and pressed the microphone icon, but didn’t notice the button. Was it even there? But then after I’d uninstalled the app I went back and reread the article and saw it say to press microphone and then button for search a song, reinstalled app and then I saw the button there. Still don’t know if it was there or not the first time around. Maybe I just didn’t see it? Either way, it’s there now. Using iOS btw. I was curious to see how it would fare because for example when I’ve tried to hum into Shazam or SoundHound in the past they’ve never come close to finding what I was looking for. But I read in the article that Google is using machine learning and that they have actually trained their hum to search on recording of humming so I got my hopes up. So in the Google search app I hummed a part of the melody for the song What is Love by Haddaway and... it recognized it! I’m impressed!
partingshots 6y ago
Just tried it out on my throwaway Android. Wow, this actually works really well! As I write this from my iPhone, this might singlehandedly be the reason why I switch to a Pixel instead of another iPhone this fall. I was always disappointed that even after acquiring Shazam, Siri could never seem to correctly guess what song was playing unless I had a perfect recording. Anytime I go to a live concert venue, or even a club, I never can get a recognizable song from my phone. Live music I could maybe sort of understand, but the club part failing was always weird to me, because besides a little bit of distortion, the song being played is coming directly out of a speaker. It shouldn’t be that hard right?
- valbaca 6y ago
  Works just fine on iOS. This isn't Android specific
- rubatuga 6y ago
  Lol, you're assuming this couldn't just be a web application with microphone access.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  It works just fine in the Google Search iOS app.
  - partingshots 6y ago
    What app are you using? I tried “what song is this”, and it just directs me to a search result on my iPhone.
    - LeoPanthera 6y ago
      Mine has a "search a song" button that appears after tapping the microphone button.
    - unityByFreedom 6y ago
      Same here, and I have no "search a song" button after hitting the microphone edit: now the button does show up. Tried humming "Peter and the wolf" and it failed.
Uhhrrr 6y ago
I just tried this with a melody I've had stuck in my head for days - no results. Then I tried "Happy Birthday" and got three results: "Las Mananitas" by Canticos "Iyi Ki Dogdun Melissa", by Eser Ulun "Iyi Ki Dogdun Zarife", by Eser Ulun I'm no Pavarotti, but I can sing on pitch and have played the violin for 40 years. EDIT: Heh, "Iyi Ki Dogdun" is Turkish for Happy Birthday, and the links would have taken me to YouTube videos of the song sung in Turkish, then English. But why not to videos in English? YouTube has some, and I'm an Anglophone user in the USA.
- youeseh 6y ago
  Sorry, it's built for people who can't sing. You'll have to find a friend with a chalkboard voice.
  - brlewis 6y ago
    That's probably it. I'm not a great singer, and I wanted to see if it could recognize my attempt at a challenging melody. It got "Everybody Wants You" by Billy Squier, first try.
- deleted 6y ago
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- flobosg 6y ago
  "Las Mañanitas" is a traditional Mexican birthday song. "Cánticos" means just "chants".
  - Uhhrrr 6y ago
    Huh! So it is. But the couple versions I found started with a verse with a different melody before going to Happy Birthday.
    - flobosg 6y ago
      Google probably based the suggestion on this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynnhJiGRcVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynnhJiGRcVo) which is actually a section from Las Mañanitas followed by Happy Birthday.
yingw787 6y ago
I'm reminded of the CollegeHumor "If Google was a Guy skit": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxqca4RQd_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxqca4RQd_M "song that goes meow meow meow meow meow meow", can't find it at the moment for a timestamp. Wonder how many real queries of that actually happen.
- NobodyNada 6y ago
  Well, there was this (now-deleted) song-identification-request posted on Stack Exchange a few months ago: https://i.stack.imgur.com/31A2G.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/31A2G.png > I have the tune in my head of a metal song. but I can't figure out. It's goes like on guitar ha ha ha. ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    This thing will be interesting for metal given how so much of it doesn't have a discernable melody or comprehensible lyrics, :D
  - spopejoy 6y ago
    Smoke on the Water, obviously
- why_only_15 6y ago
  That one's at 0:37 (https://youtu.be/Cxqca4RQd_M?t=37 https://youtu.be/Cxqca4RQd_M?t=37)
comex 6y ago
Only available on mobile, huh? Reminds me of Google Translate on photos/images, which has been available for years on mobile but never on web. I hope this doesn't become a trend.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- xxpor 6y ago
  The reverse is frustrating also: no reverse image search on mobile.
  - snazz 6y ago
    At least it's trivial to hit the "open desktop site" button, although the page isn't very comfortable to use on iOS.
  - Keyframe 6y ago
    Hold your finger on the image in chrome and in the pop-up menu there's 'search with google lens'. On https://www.google.com/imghp?hl=EN https://www.google.com/imghp?hl=EN if you request a desktop site there's an upload capability as well...
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  But you are aware that the vast majority of users would be on mobile, right? I mean I recognize that Translate on images in the browser - especially if combined with Youtube and Image Search - would be incredibly powerful, but it just wouldn't be as much a thing on desktop. I'm pretty sure (don't quote me on this) that there's a bit of processing done on the device (character recognition / isolation) before sending it off to Translate as well; not sure how well that would port to a browser. Should work just fine with wasm though.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  Googles internal mantra has been "mobile first" for the best part of a decade now...
smusamashah 6y ago
Only works for English songs. I searched for a Pakistani song as famous as national anthem ("dil dil Pakistan"). It couldn't find it. I was thinking it learns the tune of song and matches with that so language should not matter. It worked for "Desert Rose" though. Edit: Also worked for an Indian song. Also worked for few other recent famous Pakistani songs. I guess the first song that I searched is probably not listened on YouTube as much as its known by heart. It could not search for national anthem itself for the reason.
- kace91 6y ago
  I tried a couple of pop songs from spain from the nineties (not known internationally at all) and it worked.
- safog 6y ago
  Tried a bunch of Indian (and not even Bollywood) songs, worked just fine. Seems to use YT / Google Music content as a reference.
- JxLS-cpgbe0 6y ago
  > This feature is currently available in English on iOS, and in more than 20 languages on Android
  - can16358p 6y ago
    I think it's talking about the interface language, not the actual content. I'm pretty much sure it connects to the same endpoints for the actual hum and data, so there should be no difference.
- rodelrod 6y ago
  I tried the Portuguese anthem three times, with lyrics. I got a Japanese anime song, a French lullaby about a baby bear and "All I want for Christmas".
- fernandotakai 6y ago
  i just tried with a ptbr song and it worked.
branon 6y ago
It got "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees with a 17% match, but couldn't get "Dragonaut" by Sleep. Maybe I'm a bad hummer?
- andi999 6y ago
  Further up was the advice to open your mouth while intonating thr song.
potatofarmer45 6y ago
This has consumed my morning. I've been humming out all of random tunes of my childhood from folk music to pop that I never knew the name of. It works.
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k__ 6y ago
Back in the days, I hoped Shazam was exactly that. I was rather whelmed when I saw it could just find songs that were playing right now.
jeff_redradish 6y ago
As a child I remember hearing a beautiful song, sung in Japanese (so not searchable by anglo me), and today I finally found it [1]. Thanks Google! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbTsG9jrJsU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbTsG9jrJsU
- tpmx 6y ago
  Pretty fascinating story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukiyaki_(song) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukiyaki_(song)
  - jimhi 6y ago
    Incredible 'The song is best known under the alternative title "Sukiyaki". In Japan it refers to a Japanese hot-pot dish with cooked beef, the word sukiyaki does not appear in the song's lyrics, nor does it have any connection to them'
    - tpmx 6y ago
      "Ei wrote the lyrics while walking home from a Japanese student demonstration protesting against a continued US military presence in the country, expressing his frustration at the failed efforts." "An instrumental version of the song was played by NASA over the radio for the Gemini VII astronauts as mood music, thereby becoming one of the first pieces of music sent to humans in space."
      - jimhi 6y ago
        Interesting all around but I found the beef part hilarious
        deleted 6y ago
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- jackbravo 6y ago
  Ha! From the get go I remembered I heard this song in a Studio Ghibli movie, then a google search quickly told that it was on From Up On Puppy Hill :-p. I love the Internet. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Sukiyaki+studio+ghibli&t=brave&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Sukiyaki+studio+ghibli&t=brave&ia=...
surround 6y ago
I dowloaded the Google app, said “what’s this song,” and it just searched Google for the words “what’s this song” instead of listening for humming. Am I doing something wrong? Edit: After tapping the microphone icon, I have to tap the “search a song” button instead of saying “what’s this song”
- Townley 6y ago
  What version do you have installed? The latest version for me is 129.0 which came out 4 days ago, and I don’t see a button after tapping the mic
  - surround 6y ago
    I had 129.0 as well.
parekhnish 6y ago
This works relatively well! I am a non-native English speaker, and I have been trying songs from different countries. I did notice that English songs have a better match than songs from other regions and languages[0]. I wonder if their training dataset has "overfitted" to such music, or is such music inherently represented by some underlying features that are better distinguished than others. [0]: E.g. English ("My Heart will Go On" and "Skyfall") fit with 78% and 85% respectively, while Japanese ("Tonari no Totoro") and Hindi ("Tum Hi Ho") fit with 42% and 48% respectively
- HJain13 6y ago
  It depends on how good you can hum, I tried couple of english songs (Fix You, Ophelia, etc) it was around 18-20%, "Kya Hua tera wada" a Hindi song was matched with 48% I believe
mac01021 6y ago
Perhaps unsurprisingly, they answer more accurately and with higher confidence if you actually sing the lyrics rather than just humming.
- miguelr2201 6y ago
  I 've experienced the same. I've managed to get specific versions of songs (like "I want you to want me" from Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist series rather than the original one from Cheap Trick) and am very impressed with the tool.
surround 6y ago
> This feature is currently available in English on iOS, and in more than 20 languages on Android. And we hope to expand this to more languages in the future. What? Humming is not different across dialects.
- Kiro 6y ago
  The interface is.
FartyMcFarter 6y ago
SoundHound already did this long ago. It works pretty well.
- aylons 6y ago
  I'm a very musically challenged person, people usually don't recognize when I'm humming a song they like for them, and it used to really infuriate me. So, I bought SoundHound 8+ years ago in a Google Market promotion offering several apps for pennies (10c, I guess?). Tried it without much hope and damn it, it worked well. Sometimes it goofed, but truth be told, it may be my problem. Also, it had the ability to identify covers in a crowded bar, or non-playback live versions. Shazam, which was very popular at the time, admittedly couldn't do any of that - in their FAQ (which I could not find right now) they even told that if Shazam recognize a live version, it must be either a playback or a player with microsecond precision repeatability.
freeone3000 6y ago
Silence detection is awful, and there's no way to manually end recognition, so I literally cannot use this.
- safog 6y ago
  There's a timeout, so if you're patient it eventually stops
- Kiro 6y ago
  I think it stops at detection, not silence. If the prompt continues you should keep humming.
colordrops 6y ago
I must suck at humming and whistling, or I have very esoteric taste in music, as it hasn't guessed a single song out of half a dozen.
8note 6y ago
How does this impact copyrights? Is there a new class of performances that become easy to charge licensing fees for?
- dubcanada 6y ago
  Not sure what you mean? A gym is compared to a fingerprint, versus any part of the copyright material.
mmanfrin 6y ago
There's a video of a streamer saying 'hey google, play the mexican doot doot song' and it plays, and this reminds me of that. Unfortunately I can't find the video because I think google strips out 'hey google' even when you're specifically searching for the phrase 'hey google'.
- addandsubtract 6y ago
  It works if you put "hey Google" in parentheses. But the original video seems to have be made private and I can't find a mirror on mobile.
SwiftyBug 6y ago
I remember finding some songs by humming to Shazam 5 years ago or so.
unityByFreedom 6y ago
Two things I wish this had, 1) A "I'm finished humming" button 2) A way to tell Google what song I just hummed when it guessed wrong It failed for me on "Sofia" and "Peter and the Wolf" -- maybe this only works for recently popular songs?
- agf 6y ago
  I also had no luck with a number of classical pieces that are commonly recognizable. I had about 50% luck with random pop songs.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  I hummed "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" and "My little armalite" which aren't too recent or popular and it got both.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ehsankia 6y ago
  I tried many times but couldn't get sandstorm to work :(
autarch 6y ago
I tried 3 songs: * Everybody Has a Dream by Billy Joel * Kids by MGMT * Good Day Sunshine by The Beatles 0 hits. I know I'm not the world's best singer, but I was humming the right notes.
- chabons 6y ago
  Anecdotally, it's 3/3 for me, one of which was Kids by MGMT. I'm seeing some fairly divergent results here, I wonder if it's highly sensitive to the particular user's voice.
  - autarch 6y ago
    Did you hum or sing? I wonder if that makes a difference. I hummed.
    - addandsubtract 6y ago
      I hummed and it found it on the first try. Same for "In the end". On the other hand, I haven't had any luck humming "Clint Eastwood" by Gorillaz.
- SamBam 6y ago
  I've gotten about 10 hits of 12, with such diverse things as "Bella Ciao" (Italian song), "Space Oddity" (the first few bars are practically a monotone), the Pink Panther (no words) and Kalasnjikov by Bregovic (random Serbian (?) words that I don't know). It got MGMT's Kids no problem, and I know I sung out out of tune. I'm very impressed. I found out worked better if I use "doo dee doo dee doo" rather than humming.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
quickthrower2 6y ago
Too much friction. Didn't try. I gotta update the app or install something on Chrome. Why not just make it available on the web somewhere? I must have an older version of the app. Followed the instructions and it recommends Shazam!
EGreg 6y ago
Finally!!! I was waiting for this for years
justiceforsaas 6y ago
Wondering why they've launched this as part of their Search App (and not as a stand-alone app). Maybe they're afraid of (yet another) anti-trust lawsuit?
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  If they had launched an app, we would have people here complaining about how no one wants to install an app for a tiny functionality, and then when Google would have inevitably canceled the app in a few years because of lack of installs, we'd have posts complaining about how Google pulls the rug from under its apps. As for those interested in trying it out, the feature is part of Google Assistant.
  - quickthrower2 6y ago
    Or even better, stick it up at google.com, zero install, zero update, zero app etc.
tus88 6y ago
dah daH DAH...dah daH DAH daH...dah daH DAH...duh duh. Didn't work :/
bgun 6y ago
The un-subtlest attempt to get more people to enable microphone access.
- parthdesai 6y ago
  not everything has an ulterior motive
surround 6y ago
I’ve discovered it’s really good at identifying classical piano music as you play it live
bambax 6y ago
Seems to work best with songs in English grom the 70's-90's (Billy Joel, Gerry Rafferty...) Luttle luck with French songs, got weird matches that didn't sound at all like the original. Zero luck with tunes from clqssical music, even with very well known arias. May be an artifact of how this has been tested, and by whom...?
jnwatson 6y ago
3/3 for pop, 0/3 for Bach, Sousa, Aaron Copeland.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- analog31 6y ago
  0/1 for "Sugar" by Stanley Turrentine ;-) I'd love for this to improve. I'm a jazz musician, and I know hundreds of tunes, but can't for the life of me remember their names when I'm on the spot. So it's hard for me to suggest a tune when I'm playing with a band.
kbenson 6y ago
Wow, it's actually surprisingly fun to try to think of songs and hum or make similar noises to try to get google to come up with the right song. I think I see a future party game. No song repeats, first person to fail to get Google to come up with the correct song while using no real words loses.
dwighttk 6y ago
I wonder how well they handle peoples tendency to sort of drift out of a key. I can see transposing but keeping correct intervals, but what if the intervals are drifting away from true?
- danans 6y ago
  A lot of what makes songs recognizable is the rhythm pattern, not the melody. It wouldn't surprise me if this leaned heavily on rhythm as a signal.
- can16358p 6y ago
  The model behind probably doesn't really check for individual notes and their roots. It "listens" like a human listens (people recognize songs when you hum a piece of song, even though it's not correct root/interval/perfect pitch) so your hum doesn't need to be perfectly music-theory-accurate.
JaggedJax 6y ago
Most importantly, this can detect if you hum the song Chacarron Macarron.
crumbshot 6y ago
Tried a few songs that I know I've found successfully before via SoundHound's same feature - no results. Also attempted Grieg's Hall of the Mountain King and got this, not quite what I expected but close enough: https://youtu.be/e1kwr-C78mI https://youtu.be/e1kwr-C78mI
disown 6y ago
It's a great way to clear your sinuses I hear.
vespakoen 6y ago
I had an idea some years ago to make this app but based around a community of helping others find their song by humming and finding your own songs, i have a 2 year old react-native project with a basic working version [1] I don't have time to finish it but i would love it if somebody would make this [1] https://github.com/vespakoen/ontheweb/tree/master/hummingguru https://github.com/vespakoen/ontheweb/tree/master/humminggur...
- can16358p 6y ago
  Just a small follow up: in your repo home I tapped the link for humming guru, but the SSL certificate is for another domain and the browser complains.
  - vespakoen 6y ago
    Thanks for letting me know, looks like I didn't extend the domain and somebody else bought it ;)
daviddaviddavid 6y ago
I recently had an epic earworm that involved lots of old school manual searching, which I'm kind of proud of. For about two weeks I had this beautiful haunting melody stuck in my head. It would just turn on at certain times in the day and I'd find myself humming it. I have around 3500 CDs, mostly jazz but boatloads of classical stuff too. For days I rifled through bins of CDs (which is something I love doing) looking for the source. No dice. Finally, a breakthrough: One day the song was playing in my head and I noticed the timbre of the instrument was a clarinet. And it was kind of raspy, which was weird, because the melody seemed more classical and classical clarinetists have super clean tone. I immediately knew to start looking for Don Byron albums, because he probably makes up 90% of my clarinet jazz albums. Sure enough, after a couple hours I found it. The last tune off the "Tuskeegee Experiments" album is a Schumann (!) piece called Auf einer Burg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTKk1u2bijY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTKk1u2bijY
- mrdoob2 6y ago
  Beautiful!
- kaz626 6y ago
  Thank you for the link, I hadn't listened this in a long time
quwert95 6y ago
0 for 20 on the most popular and recognizable video game music, like the Super Mario Bros theme song. Seems to only work with top 100 yearly tracks with lyrics.
uniqueid 6y ago
Finally, a way to give Google my voice-print without having to buy Google Home!
anongoesprivate 6y ago
humming is a hit or miss sometimes, but if i played tunes on short videos of skits from social media apps it brings the matching title, a tough competition for /r/NameThatSong/ and /r/tipofmytongue/ :)
nawsterfeld 6y ago
But I thought of it first :c Literally 2 days ago, even. Welp, scratch that one!
- harrygeez 6y ago
  SoundHound has been doing this for years :)
dddddaviddddd 6y ago
Challenge in classical pieces is that various melodies among the polyphony might get caught in my head. I wouldn't expect Google be picking bass lines out of pop songs, so I guess it's fair that I can't search by, e.g. the organ pedal line.
WoodenChair 6y ago
SoundHound came out with this feature in their iPhone app in 2008. It worked well in my experience. It’s amazing how quick we are to go ooo ahhh when big tech replicates what is already common place in little tech or academia.
- 0xdeadb00f 6y ago
  Shazam was decent too if you hum a song iirc
- harpratap 6y ago
  I think you are underestimating how popular Soundhound was (or overestimating how popular Google's version is). I bought my first smartphone just because I was blown away by Soundhound app. I was going to upgrade a year later but apps like SoundHound sealed the deal for me
  - sircastor 6y ago
    My wife and I had a real wow moment with Shazam after we’d taken a trip to Germany and she’d heard some music played on a carousel at a park. She had a video of the carousel running and we played it to Shazam. In about 20 Seconds we were listen to a very similar recording of “Sie will nicht blumen und nicht schokolade” (She doesn’t want flowers or chocolate). It was a really awesome moment of technology working for us. Song: https://youtu.be/eHwCraFXx90 https://youtu.be/eHwCraFXx90
    - theobeers 6y ago
      Wow, nice find! I'm glad I scrolled through the YouTube comments a bit to see this note on the background of the recording in wartime Berlin: "Recorded in Berlin, June 17, 1941. This was based on an old Yiddish song 'Yossel, Yossel' (by Nellie Casman) which Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin later retitled 'Joseph, Joseph.' Wonder if the censors realized this."
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  Recently getting on a tirade about how utterly pointless the comment "Linux had this first!" "Android had this first!" "Lisp had this first!" is. It's just as bad when it's "iPhone had this first!". So what? > It’s amazing how quick we are to go ooo ahhh when big tech replicates what is already common place in little tech or academia. Translation: "You're dumb for liking this thing I had years ago". What an empty comment. I don't have an Android and never heard of SoundHound, and I'm quick to go "ooo ahhh" because last weekend my mom was humming a song she didn't know the name or words of, and next time I talk to her I can tell her to try song humming on OK Google, and her phone now does this by default, and if it works I'm predicting she will tell some of her friends or sisters as well. perhaps I should make sure to remind her that she shouldn't be impressed if it works, because a thing she would never have paid that much for, didn't care about and never owned, could do it years ago, would that help?
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mastazi 6y ago
SoundHound has had this feature for many years now, it's the main reason why I started using it rather than Shazaam. However we should not underestimate the significance of Google implementing this feature - humming to search songs will become much more mainstream now
the_only_law 6y ago
It tried it a few times, both humming and and using other techniques to better create the sound. Had little luck sadly. First I tried the Mario theme song, it got it, but with very low confidence and had about equal confidence for a Bone Thugs song lol. Tried it again with a rock song that was at least popular enough to show up on an official Spotify Playlist for its decade and genre. It got that with pretty good accuracy. Finally I tried some sludge metal and punk tunes. I can't vocalize the sludge sound worth shit so I'm not shocked it didn't come back with anything, but I'm mildly disappointed it didn't find anything for the relatively simple Choking Victim song I vocalized, but I assume song popularity is a big component. Cool feature though, unfortunately I can't hold a tune for as long as the snippet it wants lol.
andi999 6y ago
Hmm hmm him.
- nichos 6y ago
  First thing that came to my mind too! https://youtu.be/2rHcvYa93sU https://youtu.be/2rHcvYa93sU
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Kaze404 6y ago
I just tried this with "Heard a Song" by Kero Kero Bonito, in which the singer tries desperately to find the name of a song they heard on the radio. It didn't work :(
Santosh83 6y ago
What can you do if you have an mp3 of instrumental music whose origin you would like to find but obviously you can't hum it. Any service that takes an audio file and attempts to find the music title/soundtrack?
- mhh__ 6y ago
  The 1 dollar solution is probably holding a speaker up to something like this. Maybe this (no idea if its good) https://audiotag.info/ https://audiotag.info/
z3ugma 6y ago
These comments remind me of my favorite Reply All episode, in which Alex and PJ team up with the Barenaked Ladies and a studio band to bring one man's epic earworm to life and search to see if the elusive song actually exists. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx/158-the-case-of-the-missing-hit https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx/158-the-case-....
- ehsankia 6y ago
  Well someone needs to try to hum that now, or try either of the two replicated versions.
isaacimagine 6y ago
Yesterday, I was trying to find a song and used this feature, without having read the announcement. When it worked, I was pleasantly surprised.
pugworthy 6y ago
But does it know Your Monkey Peed on My Table? This is a very old joke that has the punchline of, "No but if you hum a few bars I can fake it"
tsjq 6y ago
2025 : "just think , to search song"
- jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
  2026: "We have detected copyrighted thoughts. We are sending officers now to repossess your brain. Please lie flat on the ground with your hands upon your head and wait for officers to arrive. If you fail to assume the position you may be fired upon."
martyvis 6y ago
I rang a radio station once. I think the segment was some sort of community help. Anyway I hummed a tune that was from my earliest memory (like when I was 3 or 4). Anyway it turned out to be Elizabethan Serenade based on a couple of callers working it out from my very poor rendition. I'll need to try Google's new tool out
rosstex 6y ago
I am unreasonably excited about this.
christmm 6y ago
What are the security implications of this to the wider public? (honest question)
easywood 6y ago
DAMMIT IT WORKS!!! Just found David's song from the Kelly family. In my memory I always though it was an Asian song or something :-) Now this is the kind of progress I like to see in technology. It's about time I'm getting something out of living in the future.
ManlyBread 6y ago
Kinda sucks. It's decent at recognising the popular songs from 80s and 90s but as soon as I strayed away from that I get no results. It didn't recognize stuff like the national anthem of my country or even Darude Sandstorm. It also requires to hum for relatively long, sometimes I remember like 5 seconds of a song but the app wants me to keep going for 15.
yamrzou 6y ago
This cool, I always wanted something like this. I'm wondering how did they construct the dataset to train ML models on it. Did they just recruit "labelers" who hummed for evey song? Or maybe do they have an automated way to detect humming in youtube videos, and later label those with the corresponding song?
scraft 6y ago
Colour me amazed! I saw a video of some buskers which someone shared a week ago and the tune I know but couldn't remember where it was from, it is a waltz and I thought maybe Swan Lake or Nutcracker but after listening to the soundtracks it clearly was not. At some point I was going to work out the melody on the piano (very basic strap line) and use that to search (there are a few sites which offer this and I have had luck with it in the past). But I just tried humming to Google, I have a sore throat after a minor op, have not long got up, and can't hum or hold a tune to save my life, but low and behold it offered up 3 results and it was the second one. The Second Waltz, Johann Strauss. Okay, a very famous piece of music, and a very recognizable melody, but I just thought my warble was so far off that most humans wouldn't be able to tell me what it was!
kennyadam 6y ago
Anyone remember the website that helped you ID a song by tapping out it out with the space bar? Song Tapper it might have been called, but the site seems to be long dead, sadly.
- elcomet 6y ago
  It's called musipedia and it's still on! https://www.musipedia.org/query_by_tapping.html https://www.musipedia.org/query_by_tapping.html You can also search by melody or by contour
- kilroy123 6y ago
  Wow how did I never know about this?
ComodoHacker 6y ago
I'm getting PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR on this page with latest Firefox on Win7. Google messing up with Firefox users again?
nmeofthestate 6y ago
When I try it: "hey google what's this song" [no pause] "sorry I dont know what's playing right now"
huffmsa 6y ago
Gave it the Imperial March, got "dirty by Cristina Aguilara". Needs work. It also thinks the tinny reproduction of "Go to sleep little baby" my kids nightlight plays is "Get ur freak on" by Missy Elliott. Which I can definitely hear, but seeing it on my ambient display at 0300 one morning made.me question my sanity.
Shinchy 6y ago
Had a song stuck in my head for weeks, I knew the Chorus and could hum it but had no idea. It found it though - Minnie Riperton - Les Fleurs. I'm quite impressed, although it did think it was more likely to be Eiffel 65 - Blue, a song no one should ever search for. :/
303bookworm 6y ago
Tried it with the imperial march. 0 results. For shame !
londons_explore 6y ago
While the backend seems great, the Google assistant UI for this on Android is terrible. For example, long press the home button, say whats this song, hum a song, it gives 3 suggestions, click a suggestion, click the YouTube link to hear it, click twice back to try another one of the three... And Google assistant has lost all state and no longer shows the 3 results. And if I "swipe up to see your snapshot" it crashes and dumps me back at the launcher... Did they not even test this? Being able to do back and forward navigation without leaving the user on a random screen is like app design 101, and you can totally write unit tests for it.
jmngomes 6y ago
Midomi does this and has been around for a while, and probably carries less privacy concers: https://www.midomi.com/ https://www.midomi.com/
varispeed 6y ago
Google is using their power, money and influence to occupy another niche? They should stick to their search engine and ads and the rest of the company should be ordered to be broken up. They are too big and that gives them unfair advantage in the markets. At very least they should be ordered to pay tax in a way that any normal business pays it. It should also be calculated how much money they made using tax arrangements normal company couldn't afford to do and that money should be confiscated.
bmn__ 6y ago
HARD MODE Tried with "The Most Mysterious Song" https://youtube.com/c/WhangWhangWhang/search?query=mysterious+song https://youtube.com/c/WhangWhangWhang/search?query=mysteriou... and "The Case of the Missing Hit" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22700482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22700482 No results.
brianzelip 6y ago
Mobile google app only, no web
bogwog 6y ago
Does anyone remember song tapper?! (I might be misremembering the name) It was an old web application where you tap the beat of the song you're looking for on your keyboard, and it presents you with a list of close matches. This was way back before smartphones and the AI revolution were a thing!
pers0n 6y ago
I guess they will use this to take down violations of copyrighted songs on youtube. If you sing/cover or song and some author doesnt like it they may strike it. The "Eagles" are known to be like that about their stuff
Tainnor 6y ago
I'm not impressed so far. I understand that it can't possibly cover every niche but it's not even recognizing things like Beethoven's 5th.
FlashBlaze 6y ago
This is absolutely mind blowing! Tried it from indie to popular Hindi and English songs to way back old Hindi songs and it found the correct match each time. Hats off!

524 points by kodisha 6y ago

I was just talking about this a few days ago! This is so cool. I've been looking for an 80s duet for the last 10 years with no luck.

BookPage 6y ago
Welllll..... did it work?

bestest 6y ago

Finally someone did this. I've got a million songs in my head that I'm humming not knowing what songs these are. And I was dreaming of being able to simply hum a melody to something shazam-like and get a result.

jakereps 6y ago
I’m fairly sure SoundHound has had this feature since the early 2010s. Haven’t heard of the app since, but apparently their site is still up. I think Shazam ended up winning the music ID race as I remember having both apps.
- etbebl 6y ago
  Yup, SoundHound existed, and before that, Midomi.
  - fireattack 6y ago
    For some reason, I can never remember the name of this service despite its simplicity.

artingent 6y ago

This is a killer feature. Good job, Google!

strombofulous 6y ago

Hasn't this existed in Google assistant for a long time? Or does that only match the song itself (playing on the radio/store speaker/...)

Groxx 6y ago
The long-available one is similar to how siri / shazam / etc work - it only detects the actual song. I forget how the audio fingerprinting works (probably varies by system anyway), but they tend to be pretty picky and very sensitive to small timing or frequency changes on "interesting" audio points. E.g. even quite-true-to-the-original covers often fail to find matches for me.

sailfast 6y ago

Been trying to find this in the iOS app but not having any luck. Did I miss something in the article?

LeoPanthera 6y ago
Works for me in the iOS app. Tap the microphone in the search box, then tap Search a Song.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago
  There's no Search a Song button for me. I just updated the app... edit: works for me now. After a few minutes the button just started showing up
  - chrisfrantz 6y ago
    Ditto over here, just updated and search a song is nowhere to be found.
    - fastball 6y ago
      I logged out of my Google account in the app (well switched to "use this app without account") and it started working.
- codetrotter 6y ago
  I was confused too at first. Installed the app and pressed the microphone icon, but didn’t notice the button. Was it even there? But then after I’d uninstalled the app I went back and reread the article and saw it say to press microphone and then button for search a song, reinstalled app and then I saw the button there. Still don’t know if it was there or not the first time around. Maybe I just didn’t see it? Either way, it’s there now. Using iOS btw. I was curious to see how it would fare because for example when I’ve tried to hum into Shazam or SoundHound in the past they’ve never come close to finding what I was looking for. But I read in the article that Google is using machine learning and that they have actually trained their hum to search on recording of humming so I got my hopes up. So in the Google search app I hummed a part of the melody for the song What is Love by Haddaway and... it recognized it! I’m impressed!

partingshots 6y ago

Just tried it out on my throwaway Android. Wow, this actually works really well! As I write this from my iPhone, this might singlehandedly be the reason why I switch to a Pixel instead of another iPhone this fall. I was always disappointed that even after acquiring Shazam, Siri could never seem to correctly guess what song was playing unless I had a perfect recording. Anytime I go to a live concert venue, or even a club, I never can get a recognizable song from my phone. Live music I could maybe sort of understand, but the club part failing was always weird to me, because besides a little bit of distortion, the song being played is coming directly out of a speaker. It shouldn’t be that hard right?

valbaca 6y ago
Works just fine on iOS. This isn't Android specific
rubatuga 6y ago
Lol, you're assuming this couldn't just be a web application with microphone access.
LeoPanthera 6y ago
It works just fine in the Google Search iOS app.
- partingshots 6y ago
  What app are you using? I tried “what song is this”, and it just directs me to a search result on my iPhone.
  - LeoPanthera 6y ago
    Mine has a "search a song" button that appears after tapping the microphone button.
  - unityByFreedom 6y ago
    Same here, and I have no "search a song" button after hitting the microphone edit: now the button does show up. Tried humming "Peter and the wolf" and it failed.

Uhhrrr 6y ago

I just tried this with a melody I've had stuck in my head for days - no results. Then I tried "Happy Birthday" and got three results: "Las Mananitas" by Canticos "Iyi Ki Dogdun Melissa", by Eser Ulun "Iyi Ki Dogdun Zarife", by Eser Ulun I'm no Pavarotti, but I can sing on pitch and have played the violin for 40 years. EDIT: Heh, "Iyi Ki Dogdun" is Turkish for Happy Birthday, and the links would have taken me to YouTube videos of the song sung in Turkish, then English. But why not to videos in English? YouTube has some, and I'm an Anglophone user in the USA.

youeseh 6y ago
Sorry, it's built for people who can't sing. You'll have to find a friend with a chalkboard voice.
- brlewis 6y ago
  That's probably it. I'm not a great singer, and I wanted to see if it could recognize my attempt at a challenging melody. It got "Everybody Wants You" by Billy Squier, first try.
deleted 6y ago
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flobosg 6y ago
"Las Mañanitas" is a traditional Mexican birthday song. "Cánticos" means just "chants".
- Uhhrrr 6y ago
  Huh! So it is. But the couple versions I found started with a verse with a different melody before going to Happy Birthday.
  - flobosg 6y ago
    Google probably based the suggestion on this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynnhJiGRcVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynnhJiGRcVo) which is actually a section from Las Mañanitas followed by Happy Birthday.

yingw787 6y ago

I'm reminded of the CollegeHumor "If Google was a Guy skit": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxqca4RQd_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxqca4RQd_M "song that goes meow meow meow meow meow meow", can't find it at the moment for a timestamp. Wonder how many real queries of that actually happen.

NobodyNada 6y ago
Well, there was this (now-deleted) song-identification-request posted on Stack Exchange a few months ago: https://i.stack.imgur.com/31A2G.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/31A2G.png > I have the tune in my head of a metal song. but I can't figure out. It's goes like on guitar ha ha ha. ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  This thing will be interesting for metal given how so much of it doesn't have a discernable melody or comprehensible lyrics, :D
- spopejoy 6y ago
  Smoke on the Water, obviously
why_only_15 6y ago
That one's at 0:37 (https://youtu.be/Cxqca4RQd_M?t=37 https://youtu.be/Cxqca4RQd_M?t=37)

comex 6y ago

Only available on mobile, huh? Reminds me of Google Translate on photos/images, which has been available for years on mobile but never on web. I hope this doesn't become a trend.

deleted 6y ago
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xxpor 6y ago
The reverse is frustrating also: no reverse image search on mobile.
- snazz 6y ago
  At least it's trivial to hit the "open desktop site" button, although the page isn't very comfortable to use on iOS.
- Keyframe 6y ago
  Hold your finger on the image in chrome and in the pop-up menu there's 'search with google lens'. On https://www.google.com/imghp?hl=EN https://www.google.com/imghp?hl=EN if you request a desktop site there's an upload capability as well...
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
But you are aware that the vast majority of users would be on mobile, right? I mean I recognize that Translate on images in the browser - especially if combined with Youtube and Image Search - would be incredibly powerful, but it just wouldn't be as much a thing on desktop. I'm pretty sure (don't quote me on this) that there's a bit of processing done on the device (character recognition / isolation) before sending it off to Translate as well; not sure how well that would port to a browser. Should work just fine with wasm though.
londons_explore 6y ago
Googles internal mantra has been "mobile first" for the best part of a decade now...

smusamashah 6y ago

Only works for English songs. I searched for a Pakistani song as famous as national anthem ("dil dil Pakistan"). It couldn't find it. I was thinking it learns the tune of song and matches with that so language should not matter. It worked for "Desert Rose" though. Edit: Also worked for an Indian song. Also worked for few other recent famous Pakistani songs. I guess the first song that I searched is probably not listened on YouTube as much as its known by heart. It could not search for national anthem itself for the reason.

kace91 6y ago
I tried a couple of pop songs from spain from the nineties (not known internationally at all) and it worked.
safog 6y ago
Tried a bunch of Indian (and not even Bollywood) songs, worked just fine. Seems to use YT / Google Music content as a reference.
JxLS-cpgbe0 6y ago
> This feature is currently available in English on iOS, and in more than 20 languages on Android
- can16358p 6y ago
  I think it's talking about the interface language, not the actual content. I'm pretty much sure it connects to the same endpoints for the actual hum and data, so there should be no difference.
rodelrod 6y ago
I tried the Portuguese anthem three times, with lyrics. I got a Japanese anime song, a French lullaby about a baby bear and "All I want for Christmas".
fernandotakai 6y ago
i just tried with a ptbr song and it worked.

branon 6y ago

It got "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees with a 17% match, but couldn't get "Dragonaut" by Sleep. Maybe I'm a bad hummer?

andi999 6y ago
Further up was the advice to open your mouth while intonating thr song.

potatofarmer45 6y ago

This has consumed my morning. I've been humming out all of random tunes of my childhood from folk music to pop that I never knew the name of. It works.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

k__ 6y ago

Back in the days, I hoped Shazam was exactly that. I was rather whelmed when I saw it could just find songs that were playing right now.

jeff_redradish 6y ago

As a child I remember hearing a beautiful song, sung in Japanese (so not searchable by anglo me), and today I finally found it [1]. Thanks Google! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbTsG9jrJsU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbTsG9jrJsU

tpmx 6y ago
Pretty fascinating story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukiyaki_(song) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukiyaki_(song)
- jimhi 6y ago
  Incredible 'The song is best known under the alternative title "Sukiyaki". In Japan it refers to a Japanese hot-pot dish with cooked beef, the word sukiyaki does not appear in the song's lyrics, nor does it have any connection to them'
  - tpmx 6y ago
    "Ei wrote the lyrics while walking home from a Japanese student demonstration protesting against a continued US military presence in the country, expressing his frustration at the failed efforts." "An instrumental version of the song was played by NASA over the radio for the Gemini VII astronauts as mood music, thereby becoming one of the first pieces of music sent to humans in space."
    - jimhi 6y ago
      Interesting all around but I found the beef part hilarious
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
jackbravo 6y ago
Ha! From the get go I remembered I heard this song in a Studio Ghibli movie, then a google search quickly told that it was on From Up On Puppy Hill :-p. I love the Internet. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Sukiyaki+studio+ghibli&t=brave&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Sukiyaki+studio+ghibli&t=brave&ia=...

surround 6y ago

I dowloaded the Google app, said “what’s this song,” and it just searched Google for the words “what’s this song” instead of listening for humming. Am I doing something wrong? Edit: After tapping the microphone icon, I have to tap the “search a song” button instead of saying “what’s this song”

Townley 6y ago
What version do you have installed? The latest version for me is 129.0 which came out 4 days ago, and I don’t see a button after tapping the mic
- surround 6y ago
  I had 129.0 as well.

parekhnish 6y ago

This works relatively well! I am a non-native English speaker, and I have been trying songs from different countries. I did notice that English songs have a better match than songs from other regions and languages[0]. I wonder if their training dataset has "overfitted" to such music, or is such music inherently represented by some underlying features that are better distinguished than others. [0]: E.g. English ("My Heart will Go On" and "Skyfall") fit with 78% and 85% respectively, while Japanese ("Tonari no Totoro") and Hindi ("Tum Hi Ho") fit with 42% and 48% respectively

HJain13 6y ago
It depends on how good you can hum, I tried couple of english songs (Fix You, Ophelia, etc) it was around 18-20%, "Kya Hua tera wada" a Hindi song was matched with 48% I believe

mac01021 6y ago

Perhaps unsurprisingly, they answer more accurately and with higher confidence if you actually sing the lyrics rather than just humming.

miguelr2201 6y ago
I 've experienced the same. I've managed to get specific versions of songs (like "I want you to want me" from Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist series rather than the original one from Cheap Trick) and am very impressed with the tool.

surround 6y ago

> This feature is currently available in English on iOS, and in more than 20 languages on Android. And we hope to expand this to more languages in the future. What? Humming is not different across dialects.

Kiro 6y ago
The interface is.

FartyMcFarter 6y ago

SoundHound already did this long ago. It works pretty well.

aylons 6y ago
I'm a very musically challenged person, people usually don't recognize when I'm humming a song they like for them, and it used to really infuriate me. So, I bought SoundHound 8+ years ago in a Google Market promotion offering several apps for pennies (10c, I guess?). Tried it without much hope and damn it, it worked well. Sometimes it goofed, but truth be told, it may be my problem. Also, it had the ability to identify covers in a crowded bar, or non-playback live versions. Shazam, which was very popular at the time, admittedly couldn't do any of that - in their FAQ (which I could not find right now) they even told that if Shazam recognize a live version, it must be either a playback or a player with microsecond precision repeatability.

freeone3000 6y ago

Silence detection is awful, and there's no way to manually end recognition, so I literally cannot use this.

safog 6y ago
There's a timeout, so if you're patient it eventually stops
Kiro 6y ago
I think it stops at detection, not silence. If the prompt continues you should keep humming.

colordrops 6y ago

I must suck at humming and whistling, or I have very esoteric taste in music, as it hasn't guessed a single song out of half a dozen.

8note 6y ago

How does this impact copyrights? Is there a new class of performances that become easy to charge licensing fees for?

dubcanada 6y ago
Not sure what you mean? A gym is compared to a fingerprint, versus any part of the copyright material.

mmanfrin 6y ago

There's a video of a streamer saying 'hey google, play the mexican doot doot song' and it plays, and this reminds me of that. Unfortunately I can't find the video because I think google strips out 'hey google' even when you're specifically searching for the phrase 'hey google'.

addandsubtract 6y ago
It works if you put "hey Google" in parentheses. But the original video seems to have be made private and I can't find a mirror on mobile.

SwiftyBug 6y ago

I remember finding some songs by humming to Shazam 5 years ago or so.

unityByFreedom 6y ago

Two things I wish this had, 1) A "I'm finished humming" button 2) A way to tell Google what song I just hummed when it guessed wrong It failed for me on "Sofia" and "Peter and the Wolf" -- maybe this only works for recently popular songs?

agf 6y ago
I also had no luck with a number of classical pieces that are commonly recognizable. I had about 50% luck with random pop songs.
ALittleLight 6y ago
I hummed "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" and "My little armalite" which aren't too recent or popular and it got both.
deleted 6y ago
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ehsankia 6y ago
I tried many times but couldn't get sandstorm to work :(

autarch 6y ago

I tried 3 songs: * Everybody Has a Dream by Billy Joel * Kids by MGMT * Good Day Sunshine by The Beatles 0 hits. I know I'm not the world's best singer, but I was humming the right notes.

chabons 6y ago
Anecdotally, it's 3/3 for me, one of which was Kids by MGMT. I'm seeing some fairly divergent results here, I wonder if it's highly sensitive to the particular user's voice.
- autarch 6y ago
  Did you hum or sing? I wonder if that makes a difference. I hummed.
  - addandsubtract 6y ago
    I hummed and it found it on the first try. Same for "In the end". On the other hand, I haven't had any luck humming "Clint Eastwood" by Gorillaz.
SamBam 6y ago
I've gotten about 10 hits of 12, with such diverse things as "Bella Ciao" (Italian song), "Space Oddity" (the first few bars are practically a monotone), the Pink Panther (no words) and Kalasnjikov by Bregovic (random Serbian (?) words that I don't know). It got MGMT's Kids no problem, and I know I sung out out of tune. I'm very impressed. I found out worked better if I use "doo dee doo dee doo" rather than humming.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

quickthrower2 6y ago

Too much friction. Didn't try. I gotta update the app or install something on Chrome. Why not just make it available on the web somewhere? I must have an older version of the app. Followed the instructions and it recommends Shazam!

EGreg 6y ago

Finally!!! I was waiting for this for years

justiceforsaas 6y ago

Wondering why they've launched this as part of their Search App (and not as a stand-alone app). Maybe they're afraid of (yet another) anti-trust lawsuit?

kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
If they had launched an app, we would have people here complaining about how no one wants to install an app for a tiny functionality, and then when Google would have inevitably canceled the app in a few years because of lack of installs, we'd have posts complaining about how Google pulls the rug from under its apps. As for those interested in trying it out, the feature is part of Google Assistant.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  Or even better, stick it up at google.com, zero install, zero update, zero app etc.

tus88 6y ago

dah daH DAH...dah daH DAH daH...dah daH DAH...duh duh. Didn't work :/

bgun 6y ago

The un-subtlest attempt to get more people to enable microphone access.

parthdesai 6y ago
not everything has an ulterior motive

surround 6y ago

I’ve discovered it’s really good at identifying classical piano music as you play it live

bambax 6y ago

Seems to work best with songs in English grom the 70's-90's (Billy Joel, Gerry Rafferty...) Luttle luck with French songs, got weird matches that didn't sound at all like the original. Zero luck with tunes from clqssical music, even with very well known arias. May be an artifact of how this has been tested, and by whom...?

jnwatson 6y ago

3/3 for pop, 0/3 for Bach, Sousa, Aaron Copeland.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
analog31 6y ago
0/1 for "Sugar" by Stanley Turrentine ;-) I'd love for this to improve. I'm a jazz musician, and I know hundreds of tunes, but can't for the life of me remember their names when I'm on the spot. So it's hard for me to suggest a tune when I'm playing with a band.

kbenson 6y ago

Wow, it's actually surprisingly fun to try to think of songs and hum or make similar noises to try to get google to come up with the right song. I think I see a future party game. No song repeats, first person to fail to get Google to come up with the correct song while using no real words loses.

dwighttk 6y ago

I wonder how well they handle peoples tendency to sort of drift out of a key. I can see transposing but keeping correct intervals, but what if the intervals are drifting away from true?

danans 6y ago
A lot of what makes songs recognizable is the rhythm pattern, not the melody. It wouldn't surprise me if this leaned heavily on rhythm as a signal.
can16358p 6y ago
The model behind probably doesn't really check for individual notes and their roots. It "listens" like a human listens (people recognize songs when you hum a piece of song, even though it's not correct root/interval/perfect pitch) so your hum doesn't need to be perfectly music-theory-accurate.

JaggedJax 6y ago

Most importantly, this can detect if you hum the song Chacarron Macarron.

crumbshot 6y ago

Tried a few songs that I know I've found successfully before via SoundHound's same feature - no results. Also attempted Grieg's Hall of the Mountain King and got this, not quite what I expected but close enough: https://youtu.be/e1kwr-C78mI https://youtu.be/e1kwr-C78mI

disown 6y ago

It's a great way to clear your sinuses I hear.

vespakoen 6y ago

I had an idea some years ago to make this app but based around a community of helping others find their song by humming and finding your own songs, i have a 2 year old react-native project with a basic working version [1] I don't have time to finish it but i would love it if somebody would make this [1] https://github.com/vespakoen/ontheweb/tree/master/hummingguru https://github.com/vespakoen/ontheweb/tree/master/humminggur...

can16358p 6y ago
Just a small follow up: in your repo home I tapped the link for humming guru, but the SSL certificate is for another domain and the browser complains.
- vespakoen 6y ago
  Thanks for letting me know, looks like I didn't extend the domain and somebody else bought it ;)

daviddaviddavid 6y ago

I recently had an epic earworm that involved lots of old school manual searching, which I'm kind of proud of. For about two weeks I had this beautiful haunting melody stuck in my head. It would just turn on at certain times in the day and I'd find myself humming it. I have around 3500 CDs, mostly jazz but boatloads of classical stuff too. For days I rifled through bins of CDs (which is something I love doing) looking for the source. No dice. Finally, a breakthrough: One day the song was playing in my head and I noticed the timbre of the instrument was a clarinet. And it was kind of raspy, which was weird, because the melody seemed more classical and classical clarinetists have super clean tone. I immediately knew to start looking for Don Byron albums, because he probably makes up 90% of my clarinet jazz albums. Sure enough, after a couple hours I found it. The last tune off the "Tuskeegee Experiments" album is a Schumann (!) piece called Auf einer Burg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTKk1u2bijY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTKk1u2bijY

mrdoob2 6y ago
Beautiful!
kaz626 6y ago
Thank you for the link, I hadn't listened this in a long time

quwert95 6y ago

0 for 20 on the most popular and recognizable video game music, like the Super Mario Bros theme song. Seems to only work with top 100 yearly tracks with lyrics.

uniqueid 6y ago

Finally, a way to give Google my voice-print without having to buy Google Home!

anongoesprivate 6y ago

humming is a hit or miss sometimes, but if i played tunes on short videos of skits from social media apps it brings the matching title, a tough competition for /r/NameThatSong/ and /r/tipofmytongue/ :)

nawsterfeld 6y ago

But I thought of it first :c Literally 2 days ago, even. Welp, scratch that one!

harrygeez 6y ago
SoundHound has been doing this for years :)

dddddaviddddd 6y ago

Challenge in classical pieces is that various melodies among the polyphony might get caught in my head. I wouldn't expect Google be picking bass lines out of pop songs, so I guess it's fair that I can't search by, e.g. the organ pedal line.

WoodenChair 6y ago

SoundHound came out with this feature in their iPhone app in 2008. It worked well in my experience. It’s amazing how quick we are to go ooo ahhh when big tech replicates what is already common place in little tech or academia.

0xdeadb00f 6y ago
Shazam was decent too if you hum a song iirc
harpratap 6y ago
I think you are underestimating how popular Soundhound was (or overestimating how popular Google's version is). I bought my first smartphone just because I was blown away by Soundhound app. I was going to upgrade a year later but apps like SoundHound sealed the deal for me
- sircastor 6y ago
  My wife and I had a real wow moment with Shazam after we’d taken a trip to Germany and she’d heard some music played on a carousel at a park. She had a video of the carousel running and we played it to Shazam. In about 20 Seconds we were listen to a very similar recording of “Sie will nicht blumen und nicht schokolade” (She doesn’t want flowers or chocolate). It was a really awesome moment of technology working for us. Song: https://youtu.be/eHwCraFXx90 https://youtu.be/eHwCraFXx90
  - theobeers 6y ago
    Wow, nice find! I'm glad I scrolled through the YouTube comments a bit to see this note on the background of the recording in wartime Berlin: "Recorded in Berlin, June 17, 1941. This was based on an old Yiddish song 'Yossel, Yossel' (by Nellie Casman) which Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin later retitled 'Joseph, Joseph.' Wonder if the censors realized this."
jodrellblank 6y ago
Recently getting on a tirade about how utterly pointless the comment "Linux had this first!" "Android had this first!" "Lisp had this first!" is. It's just as bad when it's "iPhone had this first!". So what? > It’s amazing how quick we are to go ooo ahhh when big tech replicates what is already common place in little tech or academia. Translation: "You're dumb for liking this thing I had years ago". What an empty comment. I don't have an Android and never heard of SoundHound, and I'm quick to go "ooo ahhh" because last weekend my mom was humming a song she didn't know the name or words of, and next time I talk to her I can tell her to try song humming on OK Google, and her phone now does this by default, and if it works I'm predicting she will tell some of her friends or sisters as well. perhaps I should make sure to remind her that she shouldn't be impressed if it works, because a thing she would never have paid that much for, didn't care about and never owned, could do it years ago, would that help?

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mastazi 6y ago

SoundHound has had this feature for many years now, it's the main reason why I started using it rather than Shazaam. However we should not underestimate the significance of Google implementing this feature - humming to search songs will become much more mainstream now

the_only_law 6y ago

It tried it a few times, both humming and and using other techniques to better create the sound. Had little luck sadly. First I tried the Mario theme song, it got it, but with very low confidence and had about equal confidence for a Bone Thugs song lol. Tried it again with a rock song that was at least popular enough to show up on an official Spotify Playlist for its decade and genre. It got that with pretty good accuracy. Finally I tried some sludge metal and punk tunes. I can't vocalize the sludge sound worth shit so I'm not shocked it didn't come back with anything, but I'm mildly disappointed it didn't find anything for the relatively simple Choking Victim song I vocalized, but I assume song popularity is a big component. Cool feature though, unfortunately I can't hold a tune for as long as the snippet it wants lol.

andi999 6y ago

Hmm hmm him.

nichos 6y ago
First thing that came to my mind too! https://youtu.be/2rHcvYa93sU https://youtu.be/2rHcvYa93sU

deleted 6y ago

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Kaze404 6y ago

I just tried this with "Heard a Song" by Kero Kero Bonito, in which the singer tries desperately to find the name of a song they heard on the radio. It didn't work :(

Santosh83 6y ago

What can you do if you have an mp3 of instrumental music whose origin you would like to find but obviously you can't hum it. Any service that takes an audio file and attempts to find the music title/soundtrack?

mhh__ 6y ago
The 1 dollar solution is probably holding a speaker up to something like this. Maybe this (no idea if its good) https://audiotag.info/ https://audiotag.info/

z3ugma 6y ago

These comments remind me of my favorite Reply All episode, in which Alex and PJ team up with the Barenaked Ladies and a studio band to bring one man's epic earworm to life and search to see if the elusive song actually exists. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx/158-the-case-of-the-missing-hit https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx/158-the-case-....

ehsankia 6y ago
Well someone needs to try to hum that now, or try either of the two replicated versions.

isaacimagine 6y ago

Yesterday, I was trying to find a song and used this feature, without having read the announcement. When it worked, I was pleasantly surprised.

pugworthy 6y ago

But does it know Your Monkey Peed on My Table? This is a very old joke that has the punchline of, "No but if you hum a few bars I can fake it"

tsjq 6y ago

2025 : "just think , to search song"

jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
2026: "We have detected copyrighted thoughts. We are sending officers now to repossess your brain. Please lie flat on the ground with your hands upon your head and wait for officers to arrive. If you fail to assume the position you may be fired upon."

martyvis 6y ago

I rang a radio station once. I think the segment was some sort of community help. Anyway I hummed a tune that was from my earliest memory (like when I was 3 or 4). Anyway it turned out to be Elizabethan Serenade based on a couple of callers working it out from my very poor rendition. I'll need to try Google's new tool out

rosstex 6y ago

I am unreasonably excited about this.

christmm 6y ago

What are the security implications of this to the wider public? (honest question)

easywood 6y ago

DAMMIT IT WORKS!!! Just found David's song from the Kelly family. In my memory I always though it was an Asian song or something :-) Now this is the kind of progress I like to see in technology. It's about time I'm getting something out of living in the future.

ManlyBread 6y ago

Kinda sucks. It's decent at recognising the popular songs from 80s and 90s but as soon as I strayed away from that I get no results. It didn't recognize stuff like the national anthem of my country or even Darude Sandstorm. It also requires to hum for relatively long, sometimes I remember like 5 seconds of a song but the app wants me to keep going for 15.

yamrzou 6y ago

This cool, I always wanted something like this. I'm wondering how did they construct the dataset to train ML models on it. Did they just recruit "labelers" who hummed for evey song? Or maybe do they have an automated way to detect humming in youtube videos, and later label those with the corresponding song?

scraft 6y ago

Colour me amazed! I saw a video of some buskers which someone shared a week ago and the tune I know but couldn't remember where it was from, it is a waltz and I thought maybe Swan Lake or Nutcracker but after listening to the soundtracks it clearly was not. At some point I was going to work out the melody on the piano (very basic strap line) and use that to search (there are a few sites which offer this and I have had luck with it in the past). But I just tried humming to Google, I have a sore throat after a minor op, have not long got up, and can't hum or hold a tune to save my life, but low and behold it offered up 3 results and it was the second one. The Second Waltz, Johann Strauss. Okay, a very famous piece of music, and a very recognizable melody, but I just thought my warble was so far off that most humans wouldn't be able to tell me what it was!

kennyadam 6y ago

Anyone remember the website that helped you ID a song by tapping out it out with the space bar? Song Tapper it might have been called, but the site seems to be long dead, sadly.

elcomet 6y ago
It's called musipedia and it's still on! https://www.musipedia.org/query_by_tapping.html https://www.musipedia.org/query_by_tapping.html You can also search by melody or by contour
kilroy123 6y ago
Wow how did I never know about this?

ComodoHacker 6y ago

I'm getting PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR on this page with latest Firefox on Win7. Google messing up with Firefox users again?

nmeofthestate 6y ago

When I try it: "hey google what's this song" [no pause] "sorry I dont know what's playing right now"

huffmsa 6y ago

Gave it the Imperial March, got "dirty by Cristina Aguilara". Needs work. It also thinks the tinny reproduction of "Go to sleep little baby" my kids nightlight plays is "Get ur freak on" by Missy Elliott. Which I can definitely hear, but seeing it on my ambient display at 0300 one morning made.me question my sanity.

Shinchy 6y ago

Had a song stuck in my head for weeks, I knew the Chorus and could hum it but had no idea. It found it though - Minnie Riperton - Les Fleurs. I'm quite impressed, although it did think it was more likely to be Eiffel 65 - Blue, a song no one should ever search for. :/

303bookworm 6y ago

Tried it with the imperial march. 0 results. For shame !

londons_explore 6y ago

While the backend seems great, the Google assistant UI for this on Android is terrible. For example, long press the home button, say whats this song, hum a song, it gives 3 suggestions, click a suggestion, click the YouTube link to hear it, click twice back to try another one of the three... And Google assistant has lost all state and no longer shows the 3 results. And if I "swipe up to see your snapshot" it crashes and dumps me back at the launcher... Did they not even test this? Being able to do back and forward navigation without leaving the user on a random screen is like app design 101, and you can totally write unit tests for it.

jmngomes 6y ago

Midomi does this and has been around for a while, and probably carries less privacy concers: https://www.midomi.com/ https://www.midomi.com/

varispeed 6y ago

Google is using their power, money and influence to occupy another niche? They should stick to their search engine and ads and the rest of the company should be ordered to be broken up. They are too big and that gives them unfair advantage in the markets. At very least they should be ordered to pay tax in a way that any normal business pays it. It should also be calculated how much money they made using tax arrangements normal company couldn't afford to do and that money should be confiscated.

bmn__ 6y ago

HARD MODE Tried with "The Most Mysterious Song" https://youtube.com/c/WhangWhangWhang/search?query=mysterious+song https://youtube.com/c/WhangWhangWhang/search?query=mysteriou... and "The Case of the Missing Hit" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22700482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22700482 No results.

brianzelip 6y ago

Mobile google app only, no web

bogwog 6y ago

Does anyone remember song tapper?! (I might be misremembering the name) It was an old web application where you tap the beat of the song you're looking for on your keyboard, and it presents you with a list of close matches. This was way back before smartphones and the AI revolution were a thing!

pers0n 6y ago

I guess they will use this to take down violations of copyrighted songs on youtube. If you sing/cover or song and some author doesnt like it they may strike it. The "Eagles" are known to be like that about their stuff

Tainnor 6y ago

I'm not impressed so far. I understand that it can't possibly cover every niche but it's not even recognizing things like Beethoven's 5th.

FlashBlaze 6y ago

This is absolutely mind blowing! Tried it from indie to popular Hindi and English songs to way back old Hindi songs and it found the correct match each time. Hats off!