Humming the tune gets the song

Waiyawuth Euachongprasit, a student at Chulalongkorn University, said the development was a content-based retrieval system based on c++ and Java technology that allows users to search for a number of songs by humming only a particular part of the song.

The system is also designed to support user variations such as a pitch error or tempo error so even if the humming is not absolutely correct, the system can recognise the tune and search the music database for the songs that are most similar to the query. The development has 85-per-cent accuracy when searching for songs in the database and comes with 100 songs, which are mostly Thai songs. The database allows users to search for favourite songs within several seconds. It will also list the five songs which have melodies closest to the hummed tune.

"My friend and I spent one year on the development. I plan to adapt the system to support more than 100 songs and then distribute it commercially in the next step," said Waiyawuth.

He said that in the future Hum me a tune... Here comes the song would support Chinese, Thai and English songs and could include a  program to support karaoke and full songs.

Waiyawuth also is negotiating with mobile operators to provide the development as a mobile application in the near future.

The program received merit awards in the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards 2007 in Singapore last year.

Jirapan Boonnoon

The Nation