Great sources for identifying songs

[barb]

Gotta tell you this story, guys...

For years I had an instrumental song in my head from the 1975-78 era. It was driving me nuts! I could not find who the artist was or the title of the song.

The song charted but did not finish in the year end Top 100 (billboard) for any of those years. So, it probably hit Amer. Top 40 for a few weeks then dropped out.

I used to hear it on the radio on an 70s Top 40 station so I knew it charted.

It sounded much like "theme from SWAT". Last weekend, I found out who sang that song (Rythm Heritage), so I searched all their songs on YouTube, Napster, but it wasn't them.

I went and checked all end of year Top 100 billboard songs at cylist.com for instrumental hits...and it was none of them from 1975 to '78.

This song was haunting me! For some reason I just had to know what the song was after trying to find out after all these years.

So, I found great ways to search for songs:
1) You Tube. If you know an artist who might sing your song, you might find that song by putting in another song by that artist in the YouTube search.
2) Napster or Rhapsody - they have many full albums
3) This is the best one - you can guess which artist it is, then hear a sample of all those artist's songs (30 second sample) on Amazon.com when you search for the artist.

Cylist.com is another good source for charted songs from the 70s.

And finally folks, I FOUND MY SONG!!! It was right when I was about to give up after searching tons of instrumental hits from the 70s....

I knew the song was not "Fifth of Beethoven," but I decided I wanted to hear that song again. So I played it in YouTube. I noticed some guy named Walter Murphy did the song.

Listening to Murphy's disco version of Fifth of Beethoven again, I wondered if he was the artist who did the song I was searching for. So, I searched Walter Murphy's name in Amazon Music. I then was going to listen to the samples of his songs.

And...the first sample song that played for Walter Murphy was a song called "Flight" -- And I nearly had a seizure when I discovered THAT was the song I had been searching for all these years!!!!!

The Internet is amazing! I never would have found the song any other way.

Walter Murphy's "flight"

Well, fplks, those are some good tools to help you find your songs.

I was just getting ready to post here asking if anyone could help me find the song I was looking for. It was impossible to describe the song.

Almost a miracle I found it.

[Bernie]

Happy endings are always great especially after so many years. Thanks for posting your experience and we look forward to your joining us on other discussions.

[remicks]

******



BRAVO !!! :icon_biggrin:




Walter Murphy's derivative of :

wiki:


"Flight of the Bumblebee" is an orchestral interlude written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan,

composed in 1899–1900.

The piece closes Act III, Tableau 1, during the magic Swan-Bird changes Prince Gvidon Saltanovich (the Tsar's son) into an insect so that he can fly away to visit his father (who does not know that he is alive). A

*****

[barb]

thanks for that!

brass section of the song is great...bumblebee parts of the song are fairly annoying....sounds exactly how I remembered it 30+ years after hearing it the last time

The Internet never ceases to amaze...

[Bismarck318]

The actual Title was "Flight '76". I have this song on a K-Tel Vinyl (Pure Power, 1977), Flight was really the song I picked up this album for on a cutout, as I missed the 45 at my record store.

Peaked in the winter '76-'77. :)

[oki_doki]

Regarding the identification of unknown songs:

this is a bit of promo, but I was an active member of this community a few years ago, and I loved the concept: WatZatSong.com - What's that song? Ask the Music Quiz Community!

hum, sing, or record a sample of an unknown track and a whole community of music addicts tries its best and identify it for you.

IMO they still lack good disco connoisseurs among their ranks, and the English side of the website is not as active as the French one, but it usually works.

For most hit singles and chart toppers, automatic solutions like Shazam or Tunatic also usually give good results at identifying unknown tunes.

[Disco Funk]

Love the internet. I've been using to find elusive songs since the mid 90s when I wanted to track down original samples used in rap songs. If the internet never existed, I think I'd still be looking for more than 90% of the stuff I've been trying to hunt down, including the records themselves since my local retailers don't carry a lot of obscure titles.

Disco Funk

[barb]

yeah, the original free Napster started it all for getting obscure songs.

There's been so many songs from the 70s that I thought I would never hear again, much less own.

If you can find songs like "Superfly Meets Shaft," that is truly amazing given how rare they are now.