What's that song? (the challenge of instrumentals)

Rock instrumentals have lovely melodies and/or catchy hooks and/or something to make them interesting without there being any vocals, but that also makes it less likely that people will learn their titles without making a concerted effort.

Even songs where the title of the song is not in the lyrics, such as Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 and 35" or The Who's "Baba O'Riley," there's at least some words one can associate with a title; eventually one may be trying to find that "everybody must get stoned" song or the "teenage wasteland" track and discover that, although the refrain might seem like what the song would be called, that ain't the case. With the myriad websites devoted to song lyrics one can type the phrase one knows in to a search engine and get some results that should point one in the right direction.

With instrumentals the only hope one has is if the song gets used in a commercial or TV show or movie one could search on that aspect, but the internet doesn't yet allow for humming a bit of a melody and have some algorithm be able to match that up (although it is claimed that some cell phones can now identify music this way... but how well can they do so without lyrics is another story).

I suspect more people could identify, from listening only, the title to the theme from "Hawaii Five-0" because it's what played during the opening of that show, but other popular surf instrumentals like "Pipeline" or "Walk, Don't Run" might not get the same level of name recognition. Sure, people would recall having heard them, but not necessarily to the point of being able to say what they were called. Yes, aficionados would know the distinctions, but that's not the level of appreciation we're talking about here. Even amongst those in the know might have some pause if the situation were reversed and they were given the titles of some instrumental songs and asked to hum a bit of each.

Another old surf track that experienced a renewed popularity was the one used in the opening credits of Pulp Fiction. I'm sure you can probably recall it now, seeing the names against that black background as the song plays. However, could a significant number of people who've seen that film since 1994 identify the title of that track off the top of their heads? I can't say I'd put money on it. However, the Neil Diamond song covered by Urge Overkill later likely would be no problem for most people who saw the movie (even once). The reason: The latter opens with Nash Kato's husky vocal, "Girl, you'll be a woman soon…" and the former has merely a piercing guitar riff but a distinct absence of anyone in Dick Dale and the Del Tones singing out "Misirlou."

Of course, nowadays that song Quentin Tarantino chose for his opening credits may be better known as the sample used in the Black Eyed Peas' "Pump It"—a song, by the way, where mostly I recall the title because of its recurrence in the chorus.

Either way, the inclusion in the film or sample the BEP track provide some text-based method of asking about that song. Google may not accept humming but one can type "song in opening of pulp fiction" or "song sampled in black eyed peas pump it" and get quick results.

So the key to having people know what your instrumental is called may not be limited to getting it associated with the soundtrack for a film or TV show or even commercial. Having someone else put part of it in a song that has lyrics also can suffice.

Of course, there's no need to actually learn this stuff unless one is inclined to want to discuss it at some point. There's nothing wrong with simply hearing the melody (on the radio, in a movie, wherever), enjoying it, and leaving it at that.

In the past one had to make the effort to associate the audio portion of a song with its title in order to find it, but these days it's unrealistic to expect people to do that. This is not an era of people knowing; it's a time when the key skill is deftly looking things up on the world wide web.

And that's enough words about that.