Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with namethattune

What's this tune. March/Guinness edition.

timsteil — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 12:13:36 -0800

When you tell me the answer, I will likely nut-punch myself for forgetting it. I can play this damned song on the fiddle, yet can't remember it's name. From like :30-1:38 here. And I know the name of the third reel as well. Little help?

I once knew a dumb comedy song with these two interesting properties....

and so but then, we — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:04:22 -0800

I once knew a dumb comedy song with these two interesting properties.... 1) It was a song in which the lyrics were just the title repeated over and over.

2) This is the important one: the number of notes in the tune was not evenly divisible by the number of words in the title.

Let me demonstrate what I mean by #2. In the Weird Al song "This Song's Just Six Words Long," whose chorus has property #1 but not property #2, the chorus goes

This song's just six words long.
This song's just six words long.
This song's just six words long.
This song's just six words long.

But if it also had property #2, the chorus would have to go something like this:

This song's just seven short words.
Long this song's just seven short.
Words long this song's just seven.
Short words long this song's just.

So: when I was a kid I was exposed to some dumb comedy song with both property #1 and property #2. Being a ridiculously nerdy kid, I sat down and figured out what the properties were that made it "work" — and then, over the next decade or two, went and forgot the song itself. What song did I hear?

Music, sweet music.

ricochet biscuit — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 04:33:29 -0800

What is the name of this piece of music from the True Romance soundtrack? Bonus round: where else have I heard it? I was watching True Romance last night, which I reckon I have not seen since it came out in 1993. There is a piece of music on the soundtrack which seems strangely familiar. I have a paralyzing suspicion that has been used elsewhere as well -- maybe in Baraka, maybe at some Olympics ceremony or something. Or perhaps it is one of those pieces reused endlessly in trailers. Any clues?

Name that tune: church video edition

undue influence — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 05:21:57 -0800

Name that tune: this morning, the guest preacher played a video about Myanmar. He was from OMF International. I remember too little of the song in the background to do a fruitful search: something something 'what does it mean to live this life' and something about a shore, maybe. Sung by a man, sparse instrumentation. Can you help me? I know video = YouTube search, but I'm on an iOS6 YouTube-less iPad and the mobile site doesn't work on school wifi.

To my mind the demographics of 'listens to contemporary Christian music' and 'may have seen this video' and 'people on Metafilter' overlap to a very small extent, but hey, you're my best hope.

Name that mystery tune?

KChasm — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:24:43 -0800

Can anybody identify this Chinese language song? At least, we think it's Chinese. A friend of mine found it somewhere totally devoid of context, and now we're wondering what it is and where it's from. Any help you can give us would be just fine.

What is this soooooong?

brilliantine — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 13:54:38 -0800

Please help me figure out what this song is before my head explodes! The details (as best I can remember them, which isn't all that well):

-a guy rapping/singing

-hip hop song, upbeat and maybe a bit poppy

-talks about performing, becoming famous/being a star

-I have a really clear memory that he talks about one of those mirrors with the lights all around it - possibly that one of the lights is out?

-I also feel like he mentions the people waiting in line outside to see him (though that might be me conflating it with another song)

-Not super recent (def not within the past 2 years) but not really old either - I posted lyrics at some point as a status on facebook, so it must have been after 2005

Not Eminem or Lupe Fiasco (already suggested and rejected by friends), or Maroon 5 (which oddly enough keeps being suggested despite my insistence that it includes rap).

B is for Baffled

shiu mai baby — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 18:01:59 -0800

Name that swingin' kid-appropriate tune! I was in some overpriced kids' store several months ago and on the overhead they were playing this really delightful song. It sounded like something from the 50's. It was a male and female duet, maybe Rosemary Clooney, maybe Doris Day, and some other guy whose voice I couldn't place.

The lyrics were all built around the alphabet: A is for [something], B because I love you, C is for [something], and so forth. I wish I could remember the exact lyrics, and because I can't, my attempts at googling this are proving to be laughably futile.

The song wasn't specifically aimed at kids; it was more like one of the cute novelty songs from that era like "Bushel and a Peck."

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I'd really like to include it on my kid's playlist, since she is all about the alphabet these days.

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!

What is this hypnotic dance/track?

Brandon Blatcher — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:47:16 -0800

What is the name of this dance/trance song I heard only once? It's a slow groove, trance in feel. A woman is singing. She's repeating lyrics that go something like this (paraphrased from weak memory): "The sun comes at the day, the moon comes out at the night". I think the specific lyrics are about the sun chasing the moon chasing the sun chasing the moon, etc etc.

It was not in movie or performance, but a random number in a club a few years ago.

Any ideas?

What is this song?

tunestunes — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 21:11:03 -0800

Name this tune. I've got a song stuck in my head that I think I heard on the Muppets. I tried Soundhound and Shazaam and could not get any results. My rendition may be somewhat inaccurate but I feel like the core of it is there. Any leads? Thanks alls yalls.

Couldn't count on you anyway

munchingzombie — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 12:07:06 -0800

The Broken Earth is a song incorrectly attributed to Nick Drake or The Soft Machine. But who actually wrote/performed it? From my googlefu I have seen speculation that it is Kevin Ayers, Red House Painters and a half dozen others, but the music and voice never quite fit.

you know, the mercurochrome song, the french one, with kalimba ...

scruss — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 18:49:07 -0800

Heard a catchy as-all-get-out song on CJBC-FM Espace musique early this afternoon. All I remember:

In French
Female singer
Had kalimba/mbira featured pretty heavily
Had "mercurochrome" and perhaps "petit pansement" in the lyrics.

Anyone able to ID it, please?

Interesting set of chord changes -- what was the name of the song?

nebulawindphone — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 14:05:19 -0800

Ska band with a horn section. Prominent piano (?) chords on the off-beat, following the pattern I i i iv. No, that's not a typo: the first tonic chord is major, the rest are minor. Name that tune?

Name that classical tune!

luvcraft — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 20:25:49 -0800

Most TI-99 games used classical tunes for their music. I'm trying to identify the main theme from the game Alpiner, which can be found here. I'm also trying to identify the tune that plays when you conquer the last mountain, which I couldn't find online but reproduced from memory here. Any ideas? I whistled both of these songs to my wife, who's a classical flautist, and now she's mad at me because she can ALMOST identify them but not quite and she'll have them stuck in her head too until we figure them out. :)

I was hoping either one or both tunes were from Strauss's "Alpine Symphony"; I wasn't able to find either melody skimming the symphony, but I might've skipped over them.

Help me name that diva!

donblood — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 10:14:27 -0800

Help me name that tune! My neighbor begins his day by listening to diva music. Most of it isn't really up my alley, except this one song, which I've been trying to place for weeks. I can't hear any of the lyrics well enough to google them, but the melody is great.

It's a female vocalist singing in a contemporary soul style. I made a quick mp3 of me goofily singing the melody:

goofy doo-doo-doo

Can anyone tell me what song it is? The part I recorded is the chorus, and it repeats a few times at the end of the song. The vowel sounds of the various held notes are all different - the first is a long A, the next a long E, etc.

And for anyone wondering why I don't knock and ask him - first, I think he'd be a little unnerved that I can hear his music all the time, and second there was a weird situation where he was reading my mail, so I'd rather not engage.

Thanks!

name that tune: an ancient transmission from Mars...

luvcraft — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 09:51:31 -0800

So... nineteen years ago I recorded the top 30 countdown on Mars FM, a radio station in L.A. Four years ago I dumped those cassette tape recordings to MP3, and in the process I found this song that I've been wondering about all this time. The end of the tape comes right as the announcer is about to say what it is. All I can tell you, which I highly doubt will help at all, is that it was #16 on the Mars FM Top 30 for January 4th, 1992. I asked some friends about it at the time, but nobody knew what it was, and Tunatic wasn't able to decipher it, so I forgot about it for a while, but just the other day I remembered it for some strange reason, so now I'm posting it here to Ask MeFi. Can anyone name this early-90s rave anthem?

Name the sappy, instrumental tune, whose basic melody I'm humming.

purefusion — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 03:24:34 -0800

Can you name this slow, sappy, mostly-instrumental song (and its artist) from the last decade? So I've known the melody from this mostly-instrumental song for years, but I don't often hear it, though it does seem to randomly get stuck in my head from time to time. It doesn't have many lyrics as I remember it, and I don't remember the few lyrics that it does have, though if I heard them I'd probably recognize them. I believe it was popular somewhere around 5 years ago, though that's just a guess. It's sort of a slow, sappy instrumental song which I believe is mostly played on the piano. It's very melodic. The melody seems to just repeat over and over, if I recall correctly.

Knowing that the above description is certainly not going to get you far in helping me on this quest, I've recorded myself humming the basic melody of the song (MP3, linked below). The hummed melody is just the unique part as I recalled it, so if you played the hummed melody over and over, you'd essentially have the song if my recollection is indeed accurate. In any case, I hope the tune is familiar to you.

http://www.mediafire.com/?x9862geuc2c1k0o

Also, perhaps to make this question more useful to others, if you know of any web service that can guess a tune from a recording of humming or whistling, that'd be cool to know, as well. The only music-guessing resources I know of are the apps like Shazam for the iPhone, but you must be hearing the actual song for it to work. I did attempt to use Shazam with just humming, but it failed miserably... :\

Thanks in advance!

Name That Song, Round 10,872

julthumbscrew — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 22:48:00 -0800

NameThatTuneFilter: heard a song earlier tonight while trying on shirts at Nordstrom Rack. Meant to Google the lyrics. Promptly forgot. Am now heartbroken. From what I remember...

- Song had a Pete Yorn-ish sound/feel, but a little more "mainstream" sounding. Single male vocalist, guitars, alt-rock-esque - neither too heavy nor fancy, but awfully catchy.
- The tone was sorta defiant/regretful.
- The only lyrics snippets I remember - and am probably MISremembering - are "change is good" repeated a few times, and the main chorus/theme (repeated a bunch of times)... something like "I'm not gonna/won't/can't fit/slip/change into the mold/something you've got/made for me". I am PRETTY sure the world "darling" or "darlin'" was used at one point. TERRIBLY DESCRIPTIVE, I KNOW.

First person to Name That Tune and soothe my poor brain gets a cookie.

What is this promo/movie trailer music that sounds like Aaron Copland?

hurdy gurdy girl — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 22:48:12 -0800

Please help me identify this Aaron Copland-esque music I keep hearing. On CBC Radio One right now they are using a very Aaron Copland-esque piece of music behind one of their promos for some upcoming show (which I can never seem to catch the name of). It's sweeping, grand, orchestral stuff. After listening to a whole lot of Aaron Copland music on YouTube, I am fairly certain that it isn't actually Aaron Copland but rather a soundalike, like the West Wing theme (which I thought it was at first--I checked and it's definitely not).

To make matters more frustrating, I have also heard this piece in movie trailers recently but cannot for the life of me remember which ones. ARGGH.

Anyway, in my desperation, I have recorded an online keyboard version of the main melody. Obviously this does not replicate the grand sweeping orchestral nature of the original, but it's the best I can produce.

Please help! This is driving me nuts.

Name that Jazz Funeral Song!

TheGoldenOne — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:10:54 -0800

Looking for a particular jazz funeral song... This is a long shot, but I've seen it work on here in the past so I'm turning to the brilliant musical minds here to try to figure out the piece I'm looking for. All I have to go on is this:

Doooooo doo doo Doooooo doo doo Dooooo doo doo doooooooo
and then it changes key, goes higher, same phrasing and then back to the original key. Over and over and over again.

What is it?!

Name that 60s rock version of Gustav Holst's Jupiter

The Discredited Ape — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 15:58:47 -0800

Another name that tune: A 60s rock version of Gustav Holst's Jupiter? I recently heard a fantastic rock song, and recognised the tune but couldn't put my finger on it. After playing it over and over in my head for a couple of days I realised that it was a small section of Holst's Jupiter. Not the main theme that was used for the hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country or the Rugby World Cup theme, World In Union - but the specific section heard here between 1:05 and 1:28.

I only realised how awesome the song was afterwards, so didn't pay as much attention to it as I should, but:
- Singer was singing the tune. I have no idea what the lyrics were.
- Guitar was playing along to the same tune.
- It sounded like it would have been from the late 60s or very early 70s. Slightly more rocking and psychedelic that mid 60s R&B like The Yardbirds, less noodly than mid 70s prog like Genesis or Yes.
- I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out it's by Cream or Traffic, but I haven't heard all their stuff, and can't see anything in their discographies that fits.

Imagine that theme in the YouTube clip but slowed down and played by a 60s power trio in the style of I Feel Free. This must be easy, but Google is reluctant to reveal the band's identity, and it's not listed on Wikipedia as far as I can see. Anyone?

Khmer folk/pop song "Blue Basket" - what can you tell me?

jtron — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:26:11 -0800

Does anyone know anything about a Khmer folk/pop song called "Blue Basket?" First encountered through the "Cambodian Cassette Archives" album linked above (there's a second version on that album that you can probably find with some minimal digging). I've seen a few other versions kicking around, too, but not with vocals*. The song's been running through my head like crazy**, and I'd like to know more about it - can anyone better acquainted with the music of Cambodia and/or Southeast Asia help me out here? Are there definitive lyrics?

* the latter two videos link to medleys of "Blue Basket" and "Look at the Owl," which happen to be the first two songs on the "Cambodian Cassette Archives" comp so we may be able to guess where those bands learned the tune

** damn near had me in tears during a particularly maudlin Fathers' Day moment

Name That Other Tune

jayCampbell — Mon, 17 May 2010 20:56:19 -0800

I've heard this pop song a couple times on the jukebox, full of bass guitar. The vocals sound like Steve Winwood and the chorus phrase I think I hear is "hearts on fire", but this song is nothing like Steve Winwood's Hearts On Fire. Hep meh?

What is this Tchaikovsky piece called?

tunestunes — Sun, 16 May 2010 09:33:21 -0800

What is the name of this Tchaikovsky tune? The version I put up is a remake by yours truly (I lost the one mp3 version of this piece).
The version of the mp3 I had featured strings and french horns (or something closely resembling them). thanks.

Oh also, I do know that it is an "overture".

Name that male/female duet country tune

iamisaid — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:33:19 -0800

Can you help me identify the country-ish/folky song in my head? I heard a song on the local public radio station a month or two ago that seemed familiar, but I'm not sure I'd ever heard it before and haven't heard it again since.

The song is a duet between a male and female, who alternate vocals. It has a country-ish/folky twang, and I believe it's from the late '60s or '70s. Sounds kind of old-timey. The woman has kind of a husky voice, but I don't remember much about the guy.

I can't remember any of the exact lyrics, but at one point in the song, I think the two of them go back and forth, reciting words in series like "bats and balls and brooms and sticks..." or the like. I can't think of the chorus for the life of me, but it may have "home" in the title. It's kind of in the style of the Moldy Peaches "Anyone Else But You" only older and more country.

Any takers?