Anyone use Tunepal?

I’ve used it in the past with great success. I even play several tunes that I COMPLETELY forgot the names of….played them into Tunepal and voila! It gave me the name.

However, recently, it seems to not get it it right. Hell….it’s not even CLOSE! The other night, regardless of what the tune being played was. the Tunepal answer was the Marquis of Huntley’s Highland Fling. And that was it’s answer for: The Trip to Durrow, Kesh Jig, and The Wexford Hornpipe. And always with only 54% accuracy.

I’ve tried uninstalling and then reinstalling it again, but no luck. Same thing…though with various incorrect tune names.

Anyone else encounter this problem? And if so, how did you resolve it?

Thanks for any (helpful) input.

The web-based version I access on my macintrash seems to be working normally.

Used it just last week at a session and worked great. Very susceptible to background noise however.

Several people use it at the local session, as do I on very rare occasions, and never had an issue. Sometimes you may have to use it once or twice on the same tune, but that’s just due to several instruments, backing instruments, and background noise.

I have no direct experience of it myself, but I have noticed recently that, in some tune ID threads on this forum, people have submitted the title according to Tunepal and a link to the tune in TheSession’s database, but seemingly without first cross referencing with the database, and the results are often way off. This is not a criticism of the software so much as those that use it and trust it more than their own ears. If I am not mistaken, it ranks results by ‘percentage match’, so a result of, say, >90% would suggest a high probability of its being right. But so many tunes in the repertoire share identical or similar phrases that it cannot be relied on alone.

I was thinking of posting an entire thread on this a few weeks ago. But I decided that posting a thread for the sole purpose of admonition might not achieve the desired results.

When it works I find it accurate - but most of the time I have problems, it won’t record or won’t send the recording etc. so I’ve given up on it.

Used it at a performance last friday and it had it right every time. And sometimes it just doesn’t work. The instrument seems to have an effect (whistle/accordeon/conertina it seems to like), as well as the amount of instruments (less is better), and whether or not there’s a guitar/bodhran player to throw it off.

I’m afraid to say that I’ve been disap pointed too.Less than 50% success rate.Maybe only suits concertinas and flutes.
Is there a similar software out there that works better?

“I have no direct experience of it myself, but I have noticed recently that, in some tune ID threads on this forum, people have submitted the title according to Tunepal and a link to the tune in TheSession’s database”

Is that a case of self reinforcing the old ‘garbage in, garbage out’ principle?

You’ve also got to remember that EVERY tune is derived from “The Marquis of Huntly’s Highland Fling”.

“Is there a similar software out there that works better?”

Yes, it’s called Kenny.

I’m fairly certain it only uses the “First setting” from thesession.org

But it’s a brilliant bit of library software!

I’ve been having problems recently too, but I just switched from an IOS phone to an Android and wondered if it had something to do with that….. looked around on the internet but couldn’t see any discussion of that. Now lately I’ve been using it at Cape Breton sessions and it wasn’t getting anything right, even the Irish tunes. Just tried it out here at home and it nailed four tunes in a row. So I dunno. I think it’s pretty amazing when it works.

TP does not appear to be able to understand the difference between jigs, reels, waltz, etc. It just listens to strings of notes. As there is only one tune (“The Marquis of Huntly’s Highland Fling”) and all other tunes being the same tune with the notes jumbled up, the fact it can put names to tunes at all amazes me. Quite annoying when one requires the title of a reel and TP insists it is a waltz. Any string of notes in one tune will have the same string of notes in so many other tunes which will make it difficult for TP to decide which tune to choose. A good ploy is to record different sections of the tune to give the programme a better chance of identifying it.
I tried to ID a tune from a Youtube clip (fiddle pipes and box) and TP failed every time. I played the tune on whistle and TP identified it correctly first time, so recording simplicity and clarity is obviously paramount.

Could it be the microphone on your phone that has dis-improved?

Jim

Just tried it on my Android phone with three tunes I know well, and it got them all on the first try with 80+% confidence.

It does have all sorts of limitations, of course. It has to know the tunes, you have to be playing the tune in the same key it’s in the database (or use the “any key” version, but that’s rather less accurate, I think), and it really helps if your input to it is simple and monophonic. It doesn’t pay attention to rhythm at all as far as I know, which is handy when you barely have a clue how to play the tune you’d like it to recognize.

Hmmm, just tried the “any key” version and it failed to even connect with the TunePal database twice in a row. Wasn’t my playing, I switched it over to normal key of D and it got the correct tune with 86% confidence on the first try.

Having used Tunepal a lot over the past five years, I’ve found it to be amazingly accurate when I play a tune precisely. However the Tunepal server seems to act up sometimes and will not return the correct tune name no matter how well played.

When the server is acting up it doesn’t matter if I use the IOS or the Android app. It’s frustrating, but usually clears up within a day or less.

Tunepal is an amazing resource for those of us who struggle with tune names.

Use it all the time. It’s not perfect and sometimes I have to try a couple of times. Whattaya want? It’s still better than asking the guy next to you for a tune name when he doesn’t have any better ideas than you do. It’s an imperfect solution in an imperfect world

If anyone is interested, here’s Brian’s full thesis on development of the algorithms used in TunePal:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.466.7935&rep=rep1&type=pdf

And a synopsis:

http://arrow.dit.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=scschcomcon

I don’t use TunePal a ton, but I haven’t noticed anything new about its ability to perform recently. I usually use it playing solo and fairly slowly. It doesn’t particularly like plectrum instruments - the lack of sustain makes it harder for the algorithms to detect the proper pitch, I think. But played slowly and solo, it does pretty well. I just ran a couple tunes into it using a mandolin, and it got them perfectly.

As an alternative, my http://abctunesearch.com/ site is still working, but it’s a bunch more work because it requires you to transcribe to ABC. And the site could really use some work - which I don’t have time for. To begin with, it’s still requiring Flash Player (although, you can use the tiny, stripped down http://abctunesearch.com/iphone.html page without Flash). I actually worked on getting more tunes in there at one point, when Jeremy added the API into the tune database here. But it’s still just using the first setting of tunes here, instead of all the settings (which would now be possible). And I wanted to build a better interface for it that doesn’t require Flash. But to be honest, TunePal kind of made it redundant. You can search for ABC on TunePal, and it does pretty well. (I think mine works a little better for that, but only marginally, and TunePal is faster at doing the calculation).

Reverend, your ABC Tune Search is the only tool I use - thanks!

Ditto Rev, use your ABC Tune Search when required. What’s wrong with a bunch more work, particularly when it means you need to make an effort to learn the tune 🙂

> http://arrow.dit.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=scschcomcon

Given all the intelligence that went into creating it, you’d think the app would let you view tunes in landscape mode ^_^

The iOS version certainly allows you to view tunes in landscape mode.

It’s By Our Lady useless.

If Tunepal doesn’t get the tune then the abc tunesearch from Reverend nearly always does the trick. Great resources and many thanks to the developers.

I challenge anyone to play “Bean Paidin” to it and try to get it to realize what you’ve just played [no matter how well played] -- on any instrument.

Sometimes it is just fruitless using TunePal. However, like anything you have to play around with its limitations….there is no magic bullet here. It requires human judgement and not just blind faith in a percentage return.

Often I find playing LOUDER [on fiddle] makes a big difference. Holding the iPad closer [the mic] makes a difference. Playing clean and steady makes a difference. If you’re scratching away out of tune and out of time it will not work well. That is a definite.

Haha, PaleAle, I took on your challenge. I don’t even really play Bean Paidin, but I know the song. So I just played it fairly slowly on mandolin into tunepal on my iPhone, and it picked it up as the top two responses with 76% confidence. And I can guarantee you that I didn’t play it all that well, since I don’t actually play the tune. 😛

@Reverend…no kidding! I am indeed reverential of your accomplishment . LOL. that’s great. I thought of lilting it but god knows what I would have got…. ;). Wish I could tell you what it was giving me a couple nights ago…some strange tunes for sure. Perhaps the server was in a bad mood.

I’m impressed. I just downloaded the 1st setting MIDI and played it into Tunepal who listed Bean Paidin as his first 1st pick. Granted it was only 52.9% but I’m doing this using the wifi at the local pizza joint and they were playing thrash metal on the radio at the same time.

…Now someone will complain, “yeah, but the server was in the mood for thrash metal and decided to oblige you w/tune’s title.”

So it seems I’m not the only one this happens to.

I just typed

BAG Bdd Bdd| BAG BdB A2G

Into Google search bar on my iPhone W/o any thought to how it is precisely transcribed

And got Bean Phaidin as second hit

No special site or software needed.
Straugh

The problem with doing that, Brianmo, is that it is trying to do word matches, so there’s no room for error. For instance if you type in:

BAG Bd2 Bdd| BAG BdB A2G

You won’t find it in the top hits, even though we would recognize it as the same tune.

So what both my tune search, and TunePal are doing is “normalizing” the input, and then doing a Levenshtein pattern matching algorithm, which computes a “distance”, without relying on whole-word searching.

If I remember correctly, the Levenshtein algorithm was originally designed to help do DNA sequence matching, where there might be mutations that keep two DNA strands from being exact matches, even though they’re essentially the same thing. So the algorithm works really well for detecting tunes even with variations in the input.

Very interesting. Thanks for that Reverend. I have found Google very useful, but your point is well taken and I can see how it breaks down without the more sophisticated features you refer to.
Regards,
Brian

Yes, I’m very pleased with it. Use it at home, at sessions, use it to get the names of tunes from youtube clips etc. Make sure you’ve set it to include all tune books. Sometimes it can’t recognize a tune, but in the end it usually gives a list of names where the right name/tune is. A great app it is

I’ve used Tunepal about 20 times and not once did it correctly identify the tune.

I’ve used TunePal for years to identify hundreds of tunes. Every so often it does seem to go bonkers and not even be able to identify The Kesh Jig, but not very often. I’ve even seen excellent site readers use TP in a session to first identify a tune, and then play it, well, and at tempo, from the notes on their phones! I’m certain this goes against all-things-trad, but its impressive to witness.

Sight-reading is a great tool. But if session players are staring at their iPhones each time through a tune
it’s not impressive.

Tunepal is just a tool, a wonderful one, and often times it’s helped reduce the sometimes marginally useful “what was that tune you played, no, not that one, the one after the one before the two after that one, I think it was in G…” queries that would occur before it showed up in the world. Reading from the returned transcriptions during the session, seen that happen at times, not very fond of that… Just save the tune to your tune list and work on them when you get home.

TunePal is the second brain I need when the tune is running around in my head in the morning and I can’t remember the dang name. If it falls below 63%, I ignore what it says.

Now all we need is an algorithm that can correctly decipher tune names regardless of spelling, diacritical marks, Scottish and Irish proper names, odd spaces, arbitrary capitalization and make it work in any software environment. Not gonna happen…

I am having trouble getting the tunepal app on my Android phone. What link is working best to download the app?

I think Tunepal is an amazing app. I just wish I had had it 30 + years ago when I started learning the pipes. Now I am learning tunes so fast on the banjo because of it. I hook it up to speakers for extra volume and search names of tunes I want to play and then have on repeat. I love the fact that there are several speeds and that you can transpose to different keys. I have learned so many new tunes this past year and am relearning how to read music by having the Tunepal music in front of me while I listen and play