Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with music and identify

Earworm

mippy — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 06:37:21 -0800

This has been bugging me all weekend - what's the song played during the interview with Sparrow and the Workshop here (at about 1.42 in)? The context - an anecdote about playing with Brian Jonestown Massacre in Paris - suggests it's BJM, but it doesn't seem to be. Help!

Identify a TV documentary (1990s) about life in the jungle (audio clip)

wivy — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 15:03:02 -0800

My father and I watched a documentary on TV in the 90s (likely TVO in Canada, possibly a National Geographic production?). It was about a boy named Ali who lived in the jungle with his father. It showed their daily life, how they hunted for food, etc. One scene I clearly remember is the father teaching the son how to create poison darts using toads. I believe the title was "Ali's Jungle", but I can't find any references to it on the internet. My dad and I really enjoyed the theme song, which was hummed by the father as he played a thumb piano. Here is a recording my father made at the time: Theme Song Any help identifying this show would be appreciated!

Can anyone identify this indie, children's folk singer?

valkyryn — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 10:31:56 -0800

I've been wracking my brains trying to remember the identity of this female folk singer from the 1980s-1990s. She made at least a few albums targeted at kids, incorporating many environmental themes. And I can't for the life of me remember even enough to do a proper Google search. Gah! Some more information: We got these tapes from the nature center at Cape Henlopen State Park near Rehoboth, DE, where my family vacationed. We bought these sometime in the late 1980s--I think--and they were audio cassettes.

The songs were mostly just the singer playing her guitar, and maybe a piano. She'd occasionally make her own sound-effects, e.g., panting like a dog, etc., but that's about it. I can't remember whether there was ever a group of children singing along with her on some tracks.

The covers were drawn in crayon, as if by kids, in color, on a white background.

I think one of the albums was called "Kids' Stuff" or something like that. There may have also been a "Kids' Stuff Too," but I might be imagining that one.

I think the liner notes said the singer was from San Francisco.

Some songs I remember:
- A version of "Pollution," which I recently learned is by Tom Lehrer.
- A version of "I Wanna Be a Dog."
- A version of "Fifty, Nifty United States."

I'll post more if I remember them, for for now that's about all I got. Ring any bells, anyone?

Trip hop song with male vocalist stuck in my head

neilkod — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 21:36:02 -0800

Downtempo/Trip Hop/Chillout song stuck in my head in a huge way. It's something I've heard dozens of times before but now, of course, I can't identify it. It's got a male vocalist, possibly British-sounding. The song is somewhat popular - it may be on a bunch of compilations and chillout/downtempo internet radio stations. 3/4 of the way through it, there's a 'break' with a sweeping low-pass to high-pass filter. For a downtempo song, it gets pretty intense.

I've searched a bunch of top lists on iTunes and rdio but can't find this song. It's killing me!

Help me find lyrics of Knee Play 4 from “Einstein on the Beach” by Philip Glass

nfg — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 04:41:22 -0800

What words are the chorus singing beginning here in Knee Play 4 of Philip Glass's “Einstein on the Beach”? Alas much googling has failed me.

Rap song with indian singing sample

wrok — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 17:01:40 -0800

Identify-that-song-filter: What is the current top-40's rap song with sample of high-pictched male(?) indian singing looping repeatedly in the beat? It's driving me crazy and my Google-fu is failing me.

Does anyone know this early 2000s song?

capricorn — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 20:32:51 -0800

I'm looking for help with a very vague song identification for a song I heard in the early 2000s on FUSE/Much Music USA. Barring that, I'm looking for recommendations of websites that help identify songs. I cannot find this song by Googling, and I've asked in a few other communities as well to no avail. This is definitely a very obscure song.

Any and all other facts which I remember about this song may be muddled, and I may have conflated more than one song by the artist in question. Here is what I can remember, listed in order from most to least certain:

The song was about acceptance and unity. The one fact which I very clearly remember was that it contained the lyric "every sexuality".
The song was about dancing.
The song was alternative rock.
The lyrics were in a "shouting" vocal style.
The song mentioned humans and extraterrestrials, or another kind of nonhuman creature.
The video may have used the color red heavily.
The band's name may have had a number in it.
There may have been a lyric about "dancing to a human beat", but I am very unsure about this.

If the song doesn't sound familiar to you, are you aware of any websites that are specifically tailored to helping people identify songs and do not require information about tune or rhythm?

Thanks!

Name that classical trombone tune

Johnny Assay — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 19:52:50 -0800

Name that classical tune! This classical music tune has bugged me for years. The absolute pitch is almost certainly off, but the relative pitches and rhythm I'm pretty sure about. I believe the theme is first played on the trombone, and then maybe later on the cello. This isn't the beginning of the theme — the first few bars involve a bunch of glissandos that I can't enter into any of the melody search engines that I know about. So I turn to the hive mind.

This is the kind of question that'll probably be answered in ten minutes flat, but it will finally grant me some piece. Plus, since I play the trombone, I figure I should know where this excerpt is from.

Help me identify this dance tune I heard on the radio a few weeks back.

circular — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:22:36 -0800

Need an pop / dance music enthusiast to identify a current song. Includes live amnesia cover version of what I think was the chorus. Upbeat dance song. Female singer. The last five notes IIRC came out as "...when I'm a-lo-one" in the lyrics. Thanks!

70s Game Show Theme Music

dopeydad — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 23:25:47 -0800

What 70s game show used Henry Mancini's "March of the Cue Balls" as its theme music? The game show in question was on TV when I was a child living in Ft. McMurray, Alberta, Canada, so it may have been a Canadian production. It probably aired on CBC, because I think that was the only channel available to us at that time. The music is the only thing I remember about the show. This YouTube commenter says that he was on a "high school quiz show" that used the song as its theme, so that's probably the one I'm looking for, but he doesn't mention the show's title.

Tranquil, folky song, sung by a woman, something to do with years... can you identify?

Kattullus — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:23:57 -0800

I have a song stuck in my head and can't remember what it is. It's a fairly tranquil, folky song sung by a woman. What I can remember of the lyrics has something about years: "[something something something] nineteen sixty nine [something] seventy eight." Ringing any bells?

In which everyone finds out I watch abcfamily dramas...

phunniemee — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:15:37 -0800

What is the song used in this clip from an episode of Switched at Birth? I don't know enough Spanish to pull out enough words to make the lyrics googlable. The song is awesome. Please help!

Please make me happy by transcribing this piece of spoken Chinese!

nfg — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:10:51 -0800

Can someone identify the words spoken at the beginning of Ground Zero's “Revolutionary Pekinese Opera” (“Opening ~ Flying Across The J.P.Yen”)? You can here the phrase spoken on youtube here. I'm reasonably sure the voice is speaking Chinese.

Post-punk Leonard Cohen?

Heminator — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 06:37:25 -0800

Calling all indie music geeks... I need help identifying a band. iPhone update nuked all the downloaded music in my Rhapsody app. I was listening to a band that I liked a lot. Singer had sort of baritone, with interesting lyrics. Imagine a post-punk, slightly less-lackadaisical Leonard Cohen. Pretty sure record is relatively recent and band name has the word 'Future' in it. Any ideas?

Descending melodic rock guitar song?

hoverboards don't work on water — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 01:29:54 -0800

Here comes an ultra-vague what's-that-song request. Rock. "Descending", melodic guitar intro. Almost certainly 80s or earlier. I heard only the intro and I know very little about music, and what I do know I'm bad at describing... so if anybody helps me get this, I'll be dead impressed.

Help identifying mystery (asian?) song

forforf — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 09:33:14 -0800

Longshot Music Filter: Please help me identify this (asian?) song from this short, poor quality recording. recording of the song in question

More background: The song accompanied the performance of some young Korean fan dancers, although the song itself may or may not be of Korean origin (as that group will often use fusion music). Unfortunately, that's all I know about the song.

Also, even if you don't know the song, but know of similar types of instrumental Asian songs (especially fusion related) feel free to throw those out, it might end up providing some consolation in the event the song ends up being too obscure for even the great mefi I-team.

Thanks!

Can you identify this organ piece?

perpetualstroll — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 21:32:59 -0800

Can you help me identify this piece of music? This one's a bit of a tough question, but I thought that there may be some music enthusiasts out there who may be able to identify the piece played in this video. http://vimeo.com/26873735

Help me identify this song... Pet Sounds + Joni Mitchell = ?

ageispolis — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 01:21:31 -0800

Help me find a song! It was on Sirius radio on July 23, between 10am and 3pm mountain time. It was a female singer singing over what sounded like a very Pet Sounds-like arrangement. She sounded like Joni Mitchell to me. (Maybe it was Joni Mitchell!) The song also sounded very familiar. I thought it was Both Siders, Now, but I listened to that song again and that's just guitar. This song sounded just a little more upbeat, more poppy, but equally as beautiful. Any ideas?

Identify song about "trees on their knees" from a 1990s mixtape

goofyfoot — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 20:32:48 -0800

Please help identify a song, or a band that played it - lyrics are below. It was on a now long-dead mixtape made in the mid-90s by a San Francisco resident, so I've always thought it was a San Francisco or Northern CA band, but could be wrong. The singer was female, an alto, IIRC, devoid of vibrato; the band had a pair of violins and a couple of acoustic guitars and employed different tempos within this song. The lyrical focus was ecology. Lyrics I recall:

And on the map
There's a big gray square
They said don't worry, there's no water down there
And I have a friend
Who talks to the trees
He says I've never seen
Trees on their knees.

Does this ring a bell with anyone?

ID a song: "winter wonderland", "wanted to hold your hand", and beer...

Acer_saccharum — Thu, 12 May 2011 19:15:11 -0800

Music filter - heard a song I liked and only caught snippets of the lyrics, "winter wonderland", "wanted to hold your hand", and "beers". Help?! Main plot of the song: walking a date home through the snow, but being too drunk to be sure if making a move would be acceptable.

This was played on the local (Ontario, Canada) university radio station.

Name That Song

LarrenD — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 07:46:21 -0800

NameThatSongFilter: He was telling me to throw my hands in the air, but it wasn't Taio Cruz. It was an Electro-Dance-Hip-Hop sort of song, and the music video started out with a couple of sweaty guys standing next to a wheelbarrow doing some sort of construction project. The rest of it was in a classroom, with everybody wearing school uniforms and dancing to a light-show. I can't remember any of the lyrics, aside from something about throwing your hands in the air... any ideas?

Help identify this instrument / sound.

Bugbread — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 21:50:45 -0800

There is a certain organ sound used in a lot of old prog music. A grindy organ sound. A perfect example is here, starting at 2:48. What is the instrument, and, if applicable, what is the setting / tone / whathaveyou (for example, if the instrument were a Hammond organ, what button would be pushed / levers flipped / etc. to get that sound? If a Moog, what dials would be turned, more or less?)?

Yet another song id request.

prenominal — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 12:54:01 -0800

The first 10 secs of Rufus Wainwright's "Poses" reminds me of another song, possibly a movie soundtrack. Help me identify it, please!

Help me identify this neat crime jazz tune with trombones..

circular — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 14:34:12 -0800

Please help me identify this crime jazz song (with great trombones!) from a sample of me whistling it. Here is the sample (WAV, turn speakers down warning).

Notes 5-9 are from a really forceful trombone section. "DAH dah DAH dah DUMMM!"

I heard this song on an internet jazz station in about 2001. The sound quality and tune totally sounded like mid-20th century crime jazz to me.

Please help me get this out of my head and into my headphones! Thanks.

Identify these two songs from the late 80's/early 90's.

wivy — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 08:53:45 -0800

Help my father identify two songs he recorded off the radio in the late 80's / early 90's. One is bluegrass and the other is alternative rock. My father has been trying to track down the names of these two tracks "since I first heard about the internet", in his own words. We've tried Shazam, we've searched the lyrics on Google, and we've dug around YouTube. All told, my father has been trying to identify them for almost 20 years to no avail.

They were both heard on Canadian radio in Toronto, Ontario some time in the late 80's to early 90's.

The bluegrass song was likely heard on the CBC Folk radio program at the time.

The alternative rock song is most likely a Canadian band, but that may not be the case.

Help me crack this mystery for him!