You may have been mixing up the music quiz programmes. Bernard Levin, who wrote the foreword for the book, was a panellist on Face The Music - another music quiz (with its "tune played on a silent piano keyboard" round for you to recognise the tune).

There was some earlier work (late 40s) on a similar idea, but that just transposed the each theme to C (or Cm) for searching purposes, obviously still needing the searcher to be able to write the notes of the theme. See The Search For A Notation Index, which also suggests that, in 2001 at least, people were advertising the Parsons book although they didn't have copies. Things may have changed though.

The Name-this-tune.com site referenced above also has some information on using a similarity measure with the DRUM code to give the best matches (rather than needing a single exact match).


Mick