Name that Tune?

March 6, 2007 7:56 AM

Name that tune: I need a game for iTunes / some other MP that will quiz me on track names & artists from a specific subset of my library. (on Windows) (also, advice on music memorization is welcome)

That's pretty much it - this is actually for a test that I have in a while, where I'll need to quickly recognize works of music (mostly Baroque, Classical, etc), so any tips & tricks for that would be welcome too. I'm pretty good at memorizing track names of my current library, but this stuff is a little more subtle.

posted by tmcw to education (4 comments total)

Do you own an iPod? They have that game built in.
posted by jon_kill at 8:08 AM on March 6, 2007

I have no idea what your musical background is, but I think being able to analyze the components of what you're hearing would help a lot.

For instance, practice asking yourself: what instruments are playing? What is the musical texture? Who is playing melody and who is playing accompaniment? Is the key major or minor? What is the harmonic rhythm? What is the chord progression? etc.

If you can index things that way it's often easier to identify them when you need to.
posted by ludwig_van at 8:37 AM on March 6, 2007

I have had listening tests in music classes before, and what I did was burn a CD (this was in pre-iPod days) with all of the tracks I needed to know and listen to it a couple of times straight through while memorizing the tracklist until I was familiar with all of the songs. Then I played it on random (shuffle) until I could correctly identify them that way, too. You could do the same with a playlist on a computer: listen to it while being aware of the track names, then play it on shuffle with the player minimized. Depending on how many songs you have to learn, quizzing yourself with the software you already have shouldn't be too hard.

(Re: the music quiz on the iPod--this would work if the songs in question are the only ones on the player, because there is no way AFAIK to define a subset of tracks for the game.)
posted by cosmic osmo at 1:45 PM on March 6, 2007

Hmm, guess I might have to make my own solution for this one.
posted by tmcw at 9:55 PM on March 6, 2007