Name that tune by just singing or humming a snippet

Scenario: You got a fat iTunes gift card for Christmas and you're loading up on music... but there's that one song that you're dying to download that you just can't remember the name of, or even who sings it, for that matter.*

You can try searching for lyrics -- if you have 'em straight -- or you can let your voice do the searching. Check out Midomi, an ingenious website that lets you sing or hum a few bars of any song to figure out what it really is.

I've been using Midomi for months and it generally works pretty well. I've used it to hunt down tracks from bands ranging from Bachman Turner Overdrive to Kanye West. The less obscure the song, the better you sing, and the more of the song you know, the better Midomi will do, but it's often on target even if you don't know the lyrics and can only hum the tune. Try to stay on key and in tempo and you'll have better luck.

As with most services along these lines, it's easier to find modern music vs. older tunes. Midomi is also chock full of foreign music, so don't be surprised if your singing matches first with something in Chinese, Korean, or Japanese.

Midomi also has a social networking component (what doesn't), which is largely frivolous but is interesting nonetheless: It saves recordings from registered users (registration is optional), so you can hear other people's warbly recordings of the song you're looking for to compare and contrast. In fact you generally have no choice; Midomi matches primarily with other people's singing, not the original recording. Some of the user recordings, as you might expect, are quite good and include the entire song. Most, of course, sound even worse than you.

Give Midomi a shot. It is, of course, totally free, so there's no penalty even if it comes up emptyhanded.

*The song is actually Foghat's "Slow Ride."