PCs rise to the challenge of `name that tune'

Help is at hand for anyone who has ever gone crazy trying to remember the name of a tune buzzing around their head.

Computer scientists at the University of Waikato in New Zealand have developed an Internet-based system that will name that tune after you sing a few notes into a personal computer. "Users can literally sing a few bars and have all melodies containing that sequence of notes retrieved and displayed," the scientists report. The Melody Index service is currently in development and limited to 9,400 folk songs from around the world. But the New Zealand researchers said digital storage and music recognition technology such as their's was the way of the future - to the undoubted relief of music shop assistants asked for the name of a song based on a few tuneless sung notes.