The topic of tune identification holds great fascination for me,
especially as it relates to early cylinder musical boxes, so
when the topic came up (again) last week, I decided to search
the web to see if anything new has come along.

I found a marvelous program that uses either the Parson Up Down
system, or you can whistle the tune into a microphone!  Since
I can't whistle I haven't tried that, but the "up down" method
works well and saves a ton of page flipping as when you use the
Parsons book.

The name of this program is Melody Hound, and the web page is
http://www.name-this-tune.com/  Also included on the site is
a fascinating and useful Links page.

The man who developed the program is Ranier Typke, in Utrecht,
Netherlands (and he hasn't visited the famous Museum yet!).
I contacted him with a 'thank you' and a couple of suggestions
and he responded right away.  It appears that there is much
research being done into digitally identifying tunes.

Another program that works well, if you can play the tune on a
keyboard, is called C-Brahms and it includes a keyboard and playback
capability: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/group/cbrahms/demoengine/
It worked successfully on well-known tunes but the biggest drawback
to all of the programs is that the tunes available for searching
are relatively limited.  However, you can add tunes to the Melody
Hound page, and also ask other users for help.

If any of our readers try out these web sites, please report your
success or failure back to our forum.  And if you have suggestions
for the Melody Hound, Mr. Typke would like to hear them.

Beatrice Robertson