Tunes may be identified by matching the Incipit—the first few consecutive notes—expressed in numerical code. Incipits are coded using 1¹⁾ for “do”, 2 for “re”, 3 for “mi”, etc. Ignore rhythm, accidentals, and octaves. Thus, the Incipit for #1 - The Sweet Bye And Bye is 123212165123335532 .

Incipits on this site are being entered manually for all cobs, but this will take significant time. Currently, Hymns / Sacred cobs are completed, as are approximately one-fourth of the non-hymn titles. Please Contact Us if you are interested in this project, or if you have corrections.

The Condensed Incipit is based on the Incipit, but excludes repeated notes²⁾. This facilitates searching where it may be difficult to determine whether a note is repeated. Note that this also excludes octave jumps.

• Hymns By Incipit
• Hymns By Condensed Incipit
• All Cobs By Incipit
• All Cobs By Condensed Incipit

The advantage of including the Incipit in the information for Cobs is that it's easy to fing via Search³⁾:

• Enter the known portion of a melody, followed by an * (asterisk), like this: 123212165* (←try it)
• If you don't know the first notes of a melody, also use a wildcard * (asterisk) at the beginning, like: *3212165* (←try it)
• It is often difficult to distinguish between repeated and tied notes, so if a search doesn't return the expected result, search on the Condensed Incipit, or try omitting or adding insignificant repeated notes. Or try a search for the beginning notes and those following, like: 123* *212165* (←try it)
• Where there's an obvious introduction there may a second incipit provided for the melody.
• Don't forget to always add an * to the end of the search criteria!