AfterDawn: Tech news

Song (without words) stuck in your head? Hum it to Google!

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 16 Oct 2020 8:51

Song (without words) stuck in your head? Hum it to Google! Most of us probably know the annoying feeling when you have a melody of a song stuck in your head, but you can't remember the name of the song or the artist who played it.
Well, luckily, there's a solution to that. Google has added a support for humming to its voice search and knows when you're looking for a song name.

Basically, the AI-powered feature tries to recognize the patterns of your humming and compare those to the database of songs it has stored. And it works, pretty darn well, as we quickly tested the feature.

You can activate the feature by tapping the small microphone symbol in Google's search bar. Then, you simply start humming. After few seconds, Google suggests that you might want be looking for a song:

Option to search for a song based on humming




After moving to the specific song search, continue humming and you'll see an audio wave resembling what you hum to the microphone:

Google listening to your humming


And shortly after, Google will bring up results best matching to your humming:

Google humming song recognize, the search results


Apparently I am not that great at humming, but Google got it right nevertheless: the track I hummed to it was, in deed, Black Sabbath's Iron Man.

Obviously, when you have a song playing loops inside your head with some lyrics, the feature is not needed. Simply enter the lyrics you remember to Google and add the word lyrics to the end of the search query and most likely you'll get the result you were looking for.

In kinda similar situation, but the opposite, is when you're at car and listening to a radio and have no idea of the name of the song currently playing. In such situation, Shazam is your best buddy. Shazam comes pre-installed with iPhone, but can be downloaded for Android too, the app detects songs almost instantly.

Google's AI-based humming feature is nice, but not a new invention: there's a similar "hum and we'll detect the song" service available, called Midomi.

Previous Next  
Comments have been disabled for this article.

Latest news

Neato, the robot vacuum company, ends its operations Neato, the robot vacuum company, ends its operations (02 May 2023 3:38)
Neato Robotics has ceased its operations. American robot vacuum pioneer founded in 2005 has finally called it quits and company will cease its operations and sales. Only a skeleton crew will remain who will keep the servers running until 2028.
4 user comments
How to Send Messages to Yourself on WhatsApp How to Send Messages to Yourself on WhatsApp (20 Mar 2023 1:25)
The world's most popular messaging platform, Meta-owned WhatsApp has enabled sending messages to yourself. While at first, this might seem like an odd feature, it can be very useful in a lot of situations. ....
18 user comments
How to Enable Bluetooth on Stadia Controller How to Enable Bluetooth on Stadia Controller (11 Feb 2023 1:04)
Google shut down its streaming game service Stadia late last month and this means that some people have Stadia controllers lying around that seem to be of no use. That is fortunately not the ....
2 user comments
Guide: How to Kick Unwanted Guests from Your Netflix Account Guide: How to Kick Unwanted Guests from Your Netflix Account (26 Jan 2023 2:14)
Sharing a Netflix account with a person in a different location is possible and indeed very common, although the company doesn't necessarily enjoy this behavior from their customers. However, ....
Guide: Turn an Old Computer Into a Chromebook Easily and for Free Guide: Turn an Old Computer Into a Chromebook Easily and for Free (07 Jan 2023 2:11)
Do you know someone whose computer is way beyond its best-before date, and they, unfortunately, do know have the skills or the expertise to do much about it? Or do you own a pile of old laptop ....
2 user comments

News archive