Music by subtraction

I'd been curious whether one could play all the notes except those for the melody, and still recognize the music. My experiments along those lines were dismal failures, and as AVI reminded me in the last post, you can recognize quite a few songs simply from the rhythm, without notes.

I think I need to find the music for some melodies I don't know, and use a computer to synthesize the "reverse" notes, and try listening to those. One problem is, how do I know that I don't know it unless I listen to it? Maybe I could translate them into one-note pieces, and listen to those, and if I recognize one chuck it and experiment with the rest.

Seems like a good rainy-day exercise.