TUNEFINDER: A COMPUTERIZED MELODY INDEX

 

            Tunefinder 4.04 will show you the name of the composer and composition for any of 13,140 melodies from classical and popular music when all you know is the melody itself. Just play the melody into the computer by clicking on a piano keyboard diagram on the screen. You will hear each note as you play it. You can add new melodies and search with fewer than ten notes if you wish.       

 

            Tunefinder uses a computer program that makes it possible to store and retrieve musical information in terms of MUSIC, in addition to just WORDS. It converts the first ten notes of a melody into a row of ten single-digit or double-digit numbers where each number shows the number of musical half-steps between that note and the lowest note of the ten. It is an interval index and so is independent of musical key. You can play the melody in any key you wish and Tunefinder will always arrive at the same Index Number.

 

            For example, the melody C C B C D E D C D D

becomes 1 1 0 1 3 5 3 1 3 3

 

and G G F# G A B A G A A

becomes 1 1 0 1 3 5 3 1 3 3

 

            Tunefinder does this by assigning consecutive numbers to consecutive keyboard keys, both black and white. When you click on a key, Tunefinder stores the number for that key. When it has received ten numbers it looks for the smallest number in this string and subtracts it from all the others. This produces the Index Number as above. Since this is all done with numbers and a bit of arithmetic, computers handle this very well, especially in searching for melodies because computers really excel at finding strings of numbers.

 

            As a user you don’t need to know anything about all this. You just click-play the melody into the computer, either to enter a new melody or to find one already there. The computer does it all. With a G3 iMac and OS 9.2, answers (after the first one) are found almost instantly as soon as the last note is played.

 

            Since both single-digit or double-digit numbers can appear in this string, billions of combinations of Index Numbers are possible. How well does this work in practice to distinguish melodies from each other?

 

            The most obvious difficulty is when a melody begins with ten repetitions of the same note, producing the Index Number 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0. When such a melody is played into Tunefinder, a message asks the user to play the melody again starting on note #8. This resolves all 17 of these cases.

 

            The next most serious case is with the Index Number 3 5 7 5 3 2 0 2 3 2 . Here a message asks the user to play the melody again starting on note #5. This resolves the five melodies involved here.

 

 

            In a third case the Index Number 0 5 7 9 12 14 12 9 14 leads to four entries, but three of these (from Strauss Waltzes) use the SAME melody, so only one melody is different. Tunefinder marks compositions using the same melody with $. Such duplications usually arise when a composer uses the same melody in more than one composition or makes use of a folk tune shared with others.

 

            Other than $ melodies, there are 129 cases of two compositions occupying the same Index number and 19 cases of three compositions sharing the same Index Number. These constitute about 1% of the total of 13,140 entries. In any case, the 13,000 possibilities have been reduced to two, or at the most, three.

 

            Other than these, Tunefinder gives only one answer for each Index Number.

 

            When data are put into digital form, like Tunefinder, it is not unusual for people with different interests and insights to find new uses for the data other than those originally intended. A simple example is the case for the six-note melody fragment C C B C D E.--1 1 0 1 3 5 . Since Tunefinder can find this combination of notes anywhere in the ten-note sequence, as well as at the beginning, it finds 22 different compositions with this sequence:

 

0 1 1 0 1 3 5 3 1 0 Bach, J.S.; Flute & Harpsichord Sonata #1, BWV1033, Menuetto 1

1 1 0 1 3 5 6 3 1 8 Bach, J.S.; Orchestra Suite #1, BWV1066, in C, (2) Courante

1 5 1 1 0 1 3 5 6 8 Beethoven; Piano Sonata #18, Op 31 #3, 3rd movement, theme 1 @

8 3 5 1 1 0 1 3 5 6 Beethoven; Piano Sonata #26, Op 81,"Les Adieux", 2nd mvement, thm 2

1 1 0 1 3 5 5 3 5 6 Beethoven; Symphony #2, 1st movement, theme 2

1 0 1 1 0 1 3 5 0 1 Brahms; Waltz #14, Op 39

1 1 0 1 3 5 6 6 5 3 Cowles; Once in a Purple Twilight

1 1 1 0 1 3 5 6 3 1 Haydn; Missa Solemnis #3, in D minor, (2) Gloria

5 6 5 3 1 1 0 1 3 5 Haydn; Quartet, Op 64 #5, in D, 2nd movement

1 0 1 1 0 1 3 5 6 5 Haydn; Symphony #100, 1st movement, theme 2

8 1 1 0 1 3 5 8 11 11 Herman; Mame, St. Bridget

1 1 0 1 3 5 5 5 3 5 Liszt; Nocturne #3, Liebestraum, theme 2

8 10 8 1 1 0 1 3 5 6 Mahler; Symphony # 4, 3rd movement, theme 4 C

3 3 1 1 0 1 3 5 6 8 Mahler; Symphony # 5, 4th movement, theme 2

1 1 1 0 1 3 5 5 5 4 Meacham; The American Patrol@

1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 3 5 Mozart; Marriage of Figaro, Overture, introduction

1 1 1 0 1 3 5 3 3 3 Mozart; Symphony #20, K133, 1st movement, theme 1

1 1 0 1 3 5 3 5 6 8 Rossini; Barber of Seville, Act 1, (4) Io sono docile

1 1 1 1 0 1 3 5 1 1 Schonberg; Les Miserables, I Dreamed A Dream

5 3 1 1 0 1 3 5 2 3 Schubert; Adagio & Rondo, D506, in E, Rondo

1 1 0 1 3 5 3 1 3 3 Schubert; Piano Sonata, D960, in B flat, 1st movement, theme 1

5 3 1 1 0 1 3 5 6 8 Schumann; Piano Quartet, Op 47, in E flat, 3rd movement, theme 3

 

            It might be of interest to musicologists to see what other relationships might exist between some of these compositions, or how different composers have used this same series of notes for their purposes.

 

            The Index Numbers themselves are the digital data about the melodies. These data can be mined for information by anyone with the necessary computer skills and musical interests.