Since the inception of services like Sound Hound that enabled us to capture audio and quickly determine the name of a song and artist performing it, I’ve loved the ability to determine what song is playing, but I’ve also wished for just a bit more. Sometimes the audio isn’t loud enough to catch or the song has passed and I really want to know what the tune was that is now stuck in my head. In those times I’ve had to search the internet for any bits and pieces of lyrics I could recall and hope for the best. It’s always been a bit hit-or-miss for me, though. What I’ve really wanted is the ability to just hum or whistle the tune in my head to the Assistant and have it recognize what I’m trying to recreate. Today, that desire has now become reality.
For those unaware, I’m basically semi-pro at whistling. Yes, it’s a thing. Actually, it isn’t, but I’d wager I’m the best whistler most people around me have ever met. Seriously, I’ve been whistling since I was 5 and am a bit obnoxious in the amount of time I spend mindlessly whistling whatever song happens to be rolling through my head at any given moment. I don’t hum to get those ear-worms out: I whistle, baby.
As it turns out, however, whistling has not been a great way to get music discovery services to understand me in the past. Whether it is Shazam, Sound Hound or Google Assistant’s past efforts at song recognition, whistling has just never worked for any of them. And, for someone like myself, that is sad mainly because I can hear and recite just about any melody after hearing it only once. For me, the easiest way to get across a melody to someone is to whistle it back.
Today, Google made my day by announcing the addition of hum and whistle support in the Assistant’s ability to detect songs around you. It is live right now and it works far better than I expected it to. I tried 7 songs already and the only one it couldn’t get was the obscure track ‘Dream Dream Dream’ by Madeon. To be fair, I tried the next track ‘All My Friends’ by the same artist and Google found it just fine.
Honestly, I can’t quite focus on anything else at this point because I want to keep trying song after song to see if I can whistle it precisely enough for Google to get it right. While this is tons of fun, what I’m really more excited about is the fact that the next time I have a song stuck in my head and I just need the name of the song and the artist, I’ll have a weapon in my pocket to find it very, very quickly. This is just the best! Seriously…go try it!
