Expert: Pat G - 2/6/2010

Question
QUESTION: Hello, I heard this beautiful piano song on a site and I do not know much about piano but I would like to find out who the composer is and the name of the song.  Here is a link to the page, the song plays as you are on the page.
http://www.angelfire.com/anime6/couples_shrine/opposite.html
Do you know how I can identify it?  
Thank you very much,
Mav B

ANSWER: Hi, Mav,

I was unable to hear it on the site (possibly because of how I had things set up), but I looked at the source code, and discovered it was a file called oppositesattract.mid and there was a link given for it. I was able to hear it by going to the link. The piece is not a classical piece. I did a Google search on the midi file, and learned that Paul Abdul has a recording called Opposites Attract. However, it's not the same piece. If you exclude "Paula Abdul", you get only 18 hits. You may be able to chase it down from there. If you need any additional help, let me know. I hope this helps.

You're welcome.


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thanks for the quick reply! How did you find the source code and link? Also did you search oppositesattract.mid on google? How did you get only 18 hits while searching, I keep getting so many.  Sorry for all the questions, and thank you in advance!

Answer
Hi, Mav,

Correction in previous message. It should have said "Paula Abdul" in the first reference to her.

OK, I went to the link you gave. I am using Firefox, so I don't know how to do this in IE or another browser, but there is a way. In Firefox, I hold down the Ctrl key and type "u". This will bring up a separate window with the coding for the page. There are various formats, and I tried several until I found out it was a .mid file. In other words, I searched on different format names. I hold down the Ctrl key and type "f". This gives me a slot for searching, and I type the names of various formats in the slot, and hit "Enter". I was successful when I searched for ".mid". I found the line that links the embedded music. From that, I learned the file is called oppositesattract.mid. Then I used Google to search for "oppositesattract.mid". I saw a gazillion hits as you report. Paula Abdul is said to have made a song called Opposites Attract, so I went to Amazon.com and listened to the track. It was a totally different song. I went back to Google and searched within the search to eliminate everything that refers to "Paula Abdul". If you click on "search within results" at the bottom of the Google results page, and type in -"Paula Abdul" , it will eliminate all but 18 hits. If any of this is unclear, feel free to ask more questions.

You're welcome.