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On 27/03/06, Karl Miller wrote: > On Fri, 24 Mar 2006, Lou Judson wrote: > >> Password protected. Can you copy and paste it? >> On Mar 24, 2006, at 7:11 AM, Karl Miller wrote: >> >>> Just encountered this article from the Chonicle. >>> Might make an interesting interface to an online catalog. > > Hoping this doesn't send me to jail... > > Karl > > Tapping Musical Memory > By KAREN BIRCHARD > > Ever have a song stuck in your head, but you can't quite name the > tune? A new tool developed by three students at Simon Fraser > University, in British Columbia, may be able to help. > > The Song Tapper, at http://www.songtapper.com, allows users to tap a > beat on the space bar and get a list of possible titles in response. > The site evolved from a project last year for an > artificial-intelligence class and now gets as many as 10,000 hits a > day. > > "We wanted to do something that involved music, lyrics, and rhythm." > says Geoff Peters, one of the inventors. "We decided to try matching > rhythms in one song to rhythms in others." > > The Song Tapper usually identifies the song, but only if the person > doing the tapping has a passable sense of rhythm. > > Tapping out "The Star Spangled Banner" to demonstrate how it works, > Mr. Peters produced a list of titles that included not only America's > national anthem but also "Island in the Sun," by Weezer, and "Happy > Birthday." (Tapping out "O Canada" brings up many possibilities, > including "YMCA.") > > Mr. Peters, Caroline Anthony, and Michael Schwartz generated a lot of > interest in their algorithm-based invention last year at a conference > on artificial intelligence. Since then, the site's song base has > increased to more than 11,000 songs, since anyone can add to it if the > song they just tapped out doesn't show up as a possibility. > > Mr. Peters sees a future for the idea in children's toys, and there > has been interest in linking the Song Tapper with an online music > store. In the meantime, he says, the cost of the server is covered by > the site's advertisers. "Each connection gives us a little bit of > money," he says. There is a book called "Directory of Tunes" by Parsons which is a little more sophisticated as it uses UP and DOWN relative to the previous note. That could no doubt be converted into a web site. Regards -- Don Cox [log in to unmask]