Re: Defeating Music Identification Apps - Adding Gaussian Noise?

On Thu, Apr 09, 2026 at 03:28:40AM +0000, Ivan K wrote:
 
> Often, I have quizzes that include students identifying
> music from our assigned class listening: for example,
> music from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, etc.
> 
> As some of you may know, there are phone apps now, 
> the most prominent being "Shazam" that can identify
> almost any commercially released audio. 
>
> Also I have read how one can add a bit of gaussian noise
> to a sound file, and while to the human ear, the music
> sounds identical, adding this noise can interfere with
> or prevent these identification apps from identifying the music.

There's a zillion ways to do this, but I doubt very very much that
adding a bit of noise will defeat even the most primitive music ID
systems, and Shazam isn't primitive to start with.

For your quiz I assume you want to test if your students can identify
a particular period or style rather than the actual title of the 
piece.

The way to do this is to force them to motivate their final choice.
Instead of having just one multiple choice between a number of periods
or styles, also have them identify features:

- complexity, 
- type of harmony, 
- orchestration,
- temporal structure, 
- ....

providing a MC item for each of these.

It's these things that allow someone having a basic musical
knowledge to classify even a piece they never heared before
into Medieval / Renaissance / Baroque / Classic / Romantic /
Impressionist / ... and a number of contemporary styles.

Ciao,

-- 
FA