I told you last week how easy it is to use your Android phone to identify a song from the radio or TV. (Click here to read that tip) Now, Google has upped it’s game and made it even easier to identify songs.
Google Assistant can now identify song if you whistle or hum the tune. I had to try this out immediately.
I started by tapping the mic on the Google Assistant on my phone. I cheated a little here and la,la, la’d because I’m seriously tone deaf and don’t know how to whistle.
The phone listened as I la,la’d.
And came up with the theme from the Banana Splits.
I was far less successful with humming and I can’t whistle. I’m also completely tone deaf. So, I enlisted my husband. He hummed the tune to his favorite TV show.
It took Google about 30 seconds to correctly identify the song as the theme from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I am unsure how Jungle Boogie figured in there as a 13% match. Unlike me, my husband can hum on key.
Up next, we tried whistling. Google quickly identified Silent Night.
How does it work? Google explained that it’s possible because of a sophisticated artificial intelligence. “When you hum a melody into Search, our machine learning models transform the audio into a number-based sequence representing the song’s melody. Our models are trained to identify songs based on a variety of sources, including humans singing, whistling or humming, as well as studio recordings. The algorithms also take away all the other details, like accompanying instruments and the voice’s timbre and tone. What we’re left with is the song’s number-based sequence, or the fingerprint.”
It’s a handy tool and also fun to play with. Check it out.