How many of you have heard about the new tune-identification service
where, when you hear a tune you can't identify, you dial a three-digit
code on your cellphone and point the phone at the sound source?  Then
for a $1 fee you receive a text message that names both the tune and
the artist.

The database, owned by Shazam, a British company, contains over a
million and a half sound tracks and works by pattern recognition.
I'm sure that the 1.5+ million tunes are modern ones and a drop in the
bucket compared to the millions and millions of melodies that have been
created over the centuries.  But still the idea is interesting and one
that Robbie Rhodes has mused about in the past.

Matthew Caulfield (Irondequoit, N.Y.)

 [ See "Musical Theme Search Using Incipits - What's That Song
 [ I Just Played?", by Robbie Rhodes (An Absentminded Performer),
 [ at http://mmd.foxtail.com/Sounds/incipits.html