How to Find a Tune Online

Use the Internet to locate a song by its lyrics or by singing the song into the computer microphone.

Looking up a song online usually takes under a minute thanks to the massive wealth of online song-lyric search databases. These databases allow users to search for a song by entering a portion of the song's lyrics. The database will then display information about the song such as when it was released, who wrote it and who recorded it. However, there are other ways to search for a song or tune online, for example if there are no lyrics or you cannot remember any of the lyrics.

Instructions

1. Search for the song on Midomi, an online music search engine that searches based on a recorded sample of the user singing or humming the song in question. Go to the Midomi website and click the "Sing or Hum" button at the top of the main page. Sing or hum at least 10 seconds or more of the tune's melody into the computer's microphone, then click the arrow button to view the search results.

2. Go to the Best Classical Tunes website and use their online tune lookup service to search for a tune by notes. Play the first 10 notes of the tune by clicking on the virtual piano. Click the "Look This Up" button below the virtual piano to search for the tune. View the results on the next screen, or go back and try playing the tune again if unsatisfied with the search results.

3. Search an online song lyrics database for some of the tune's memorable lyrics. Some online lyrics databases include Lyrster and eLyrics. If online lyrics databases prove ineffective in finding a particular tune, try entering some of the song's lyrics in quotation marks into a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing. Putting the lyrics in quotation marks forces the search engine to return only websites that have that exact phrase in their text, and helps narrow results.

References

• Midomi: Search by Singing or Humming
• Best Classical Tunes: Tune Lookup

Resources

• eLyrics
• Lyrster