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Welcome to Guess That Scat, a trivia game where you need to identify the song name and artist from scats!

Press the play button to hear the scat, then type your answer for the artist and/or song name in the answer box. Once both answers have been correctly given or the GIVE UP button is hit, any remaining answers and a button to move on to the next scat will be revealed.

Guess That Scat is family-friendly; every audio snippet is carefully cropped to ensure clean content. However, the original tracks from which the scat and song clips are sampled may contain explicit themes or explicit lyrics outside of the selected clips.

If you are interested in using this for your own trivia, let me know! I am happy to help by providing data, hosting a custom set of scats based off your preferences, or however else I can.

Have fun! 😊

1. Stats: Header button to open up the stats window
2. Info: Header button to open up the info overlay
3. Settings: Header button to open up the settings menu
4. Share: Header button to open up the sharing options
5. Volume Slider: Slider to change the site's volume
6. Jump-to-Scat Menu: Clicking the scat number opens a dropdown menu that allows you to jump to a specific scat (note: this is not meant to be the primary way to navigate the game... correctly entering both answers or hitting the GIVE UP button and then moving to the next question with the NEXT SCAT button is the intended way to navigate the game)
7. Scat Play Button: Clicking this button will start the question and play/pause the scat (question audio)
8. Song Play Button: Clicking this button will play/pause the song (answer audio) - This button appears only after the question is completed (when both the song name and artist are entered correctly OR the GIVE UP button is pressed)
9. Input Answer Box: Type the song name and artist into this answer box - Correct answers are accepted automatically
10. Give Up Button: Clicking this button reveals the answers (if the setting allows)
11. Song Answer: The revealed song name answer for the given scat, highlighted red or green based on correctness only after the question is completed
12. Artist Answer: The revealed artist name answer for the given scat, highlighted red or green based on correctness only after the question is completed
13. Next Scat Button: Clicking this button proceeds to the next scat - This button appears only after the question is completed

Description of Settings

Here are the current settings available in Guess That Scat:

• Data collection opt-out:
  ON = Data collection disabled
  OFF = Data collection enabled

  By default, answers are sent to a remote database to help assess scat difficulty. Enabling this setting prevents this. This setting is also stored locally in the browser as a cookie so that users do not need to re-disable data collection for each visit (if allowed).

• Remove Duplicates:
  ON = Maximum 1 scat per song
  OFF = >1 scat per song is possible

  By default, it is possible to have multiple scats from the same song. Enabling this setting will make it so that there can only be 1 scat for any given song (no 2 scats can be from the same song). Note that it is still possible to have multiple scats from the same artist but different songs even when this setting is enabled.

• Disable song autoplay:
  ON = Song will not autoplay
  OFF = Song will autoplay

  After a scat is answered correctly or the user presses the GIVE UP button, an audio clip of the song surrounding the scat will start to play by default. Enabling this setting will prevent the answer audio from automatically playing. You may still hear it by manually pressing the fedora-less play button that appears.

• Filter by Genre:
  ON = Keeps scats with the genre in the scat list
  OFF = Removes scats with the genre from the scat list

  Each of these settings allows the user to remove scats from the scat list with the genres "pop", "rock", "rap", "disney", "non-english", "musicals", "meme", and "other" (songs with none of the other listed genres). This behaves like active-removal, so a scat with multiple genres will be removed if any one of their genres are disabled. If the scat you are currently on is removed from the scat list, the next available scat will be loaded.

• Filter by Date:

  Only scats within the chosen date range will populate the scat list. Scats outside of the date range will be removed.

Scat Definition

Guess That Scat uses a liberal definition for the word "scat," but it is not too dissimilar from existing definitions...

Oxford English Dictionary (OED)

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Cambridge Dictionary

Wikipedia

Guess That Scat Definition

In the context of Guess That Scat, we really aren't using the proper definition of a scat. In truth, it would be more accurate to call the game Guess That Non-Lexical Vocable, Wordless Vocal, Logatome, Lilting, Nonsense Syllable, or what have you... But none of that really has the same ring to it. To clarify, this is a simple definition we use for "scat":

We judge whether something counts as "vocals", "part of a word", "interesting", or a "scat" on a case-by-case basis... But this definition sums up the main idea in few words.

This is a deliberately vague and broad description, because this is really all about picking cool snippets that will be satisfying for trivia.

Alternate Definitions

We recognize that there are other definitions for the word "scat", but we like the name regardless :)

Courtesy of Oxford Languages and Google

Scat Selection

Not every audio clip that fits the definition makes a great scat. Prospective scats are assessed across a range of scat qualities and categories:

Scat Qualities

• Uniqueness:   How distinct and recognizable is the scat?

     The more unique, fun, and identifiable the better.

     Multiple scats from the same song is fine as long as they are unique.

• Context:   How popular is the song?

     The more popular the better.

     Scats that are part of jingles/other non-songs can be okay, if iconic enough.

     Covers/parodies can be okay, if iconic enough.

• Placement:   How well placed in the song is the scat?

     For example, the very beginning and end are typically worse than the chorus.

• Importance:   How critical is the scat to the song?

     The more important the better.

• Wordiness:   How much of a word is the scat?

     If the scat is in no way associated with a word, that is best.

     If the scat is a sound stemming off of the beginning or end of a word, that is not ideal.

     If the scat is a word but does not carry the word's meaning, that is okay.

          (e.g. "yeah", "hey", or "oh" in certain contexts)

• Rawness:   How edited is the scat?

     Minimal post-processing is ideal.

• Melody:   How much does the scat hint to the melody?

     A bit can be good, but too much can be a negative.

• Length:   How long is the scat?

     Ideally the full vocal segment should be included in the clip.

     Easier scats should be short without cutting off the scat segment.

     Harder scats can be longer.

Scat Categories

Here are some thoughts regarding certain scat categories (not exhaustive):

• 😊 Traditional:   Kinda sounds like words but definitively are not
• 😊 Mimic:   Mimic (traditionally jazzy) instruments with vocals
• 😊 Interjection:   Random vocal noises that ideally take center stage
• 🤔 Onomatopoeia:   Acceptible, but better to be truly dissassociated from language
• 🤔 Yodeling:   Pretty good, but typically not too identifiable
• 🤔 Background Vocals:   Worse than vocals in the foreground
• 🤔 Backup Vocalist:   Worse than lead vocalist
• 🤔 Chorus/Stack:   The fewer voices the better; 1 is ideal
• 🤔 Harmony:   2-part better than 3-part, same vocalist better than multiple, etc.
• 🤔 Beatboxing:   Typically pretty good if its in the foreground
• 🤔 Screams:   Kinda basic so they need to be pretty iconic
• 🤔 Laughter:   Not great, so needs to be pretty iconic
• 😞 A Capella:   Doesn't really qualify unless its in the foreground and really iconic
• 😞 Breathing:   Can count if its really iconic
• 😞 Whistling:   Doesn't really count unless its super iconic
• ❌ Clapping/Snapping/Stomping/etc:   Doesn't count imo

Scat Collection

There is an incentive to spread the scats out across many different genres, eras, and difficulty types (short scat, non-melodic scat, more obscure song/artist, etc...). This game lends itself well to being played by all sorts of individuals or as a group/family, so having scats that cater to all sorts of different people and tastes is ideal.

There are currently ~275 scats in the game spanning many genres and decades (note that these distributions may be slightly out of date):

Sources, References, and Acknowledgements

Thank you to GitHub Pages for hosting the webpage.

Thank you to Firebase for managing the database and providing anonymous authentication services.

Scat and song source audio is provided by the various artists in the revealed answers and their teams. All source audio belongs to their respective copyright holders and are used under fair use for trivia purposes.

Scat and song audio clip creation is made easier thanks to Audacity, UVR5, and FFmpeg.

Thank you to Wikipedia for providing background information for the featured songs when the information publicized by the artist directly is insufficient.

The correct answer sound effect is provided by Zapsplat.

Thank you to friends and family for giving scat suggestions, general suggestions, and helping test/play!

Have fun! 😊