Have a Tune Stuck in Your Head? Google Will Now Find It, If You Can Hum Correctly

You ever casually hum a tune in your head while doing something, and then becoming conscious of it, try to remember the song - only to find, your brain has tricked you?

You know the tune. You vaguely know the lyrics. You just don't know the song. You've definitely heard it somewhere before: on a car radio, your friend singing it, in the background of a video on social media, a television advertisement, but you just can't put your finger on it.

There may be a solution other than racking your brain about it and ending up still clueless, and it's Google.

On your mobile device, open the latest version of the Google app or find your Google Search widget, tap the mic icon and say “what's this song?” or click the “Search a song” button. Then start humming for 10-15 seconds.

On Google Assistant, it’s just as simple. Say “Hey Google, what’s this song?” and then hum the tune. This feature is currently available in English on iOS, and in more than 20 languages on Android.

When you’re done humming, Google learning algorithm will help identify potential song matches. It'll show you the most likely options based on the tune. Then you can select the best match and explore information on the song and artist, view any accompanying music videos or listen to the song on your favorite music app, find the lyrics, read analysis and even check out other recordings of the song when available, says Google.

Google also details how it works: "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.

We compare these sequences to thousands of songs from around the world and identify potential matches in real time. For example, if you listen to Tones and I’s “Dance Monkey,” you’ll recognize the song whether it was sung, whistled, or hummed. Similarly, our machine learning models recognize the melody of the studio-recorded version of the song, which we can use to match it with a person’s hummed audio," says their explanation.

So the next time you can't remember a song, you know what to do.