This mosquito’s got the high E. She plays it on her wings like all the other insects.
Roll over the notehead below.
Should you hear this Blood Tone, you’d do well to make haste. Mosquitoes kill more people than any other animal. Or, if you practice ahimsa, maybe you can vamp on the mosquito’s drone. Just hit a high E on your guitar!
The house fly drones in F Sharp (F#). She’s a little sharper than that, but with the doppler shift constantly bending her drone as she flies away, the F# is probably around where she lands. Roll over the notehead below.
F Sharp is an obscure tone. In Meantone Tuning, the common European tuning from 1500 to 1900, an F# triad was unplayable. Not until the 18th and 19th centuries, with the advent of standardized turning systems like Well Temperament and Equal Temperament, did the F Sharp tonality of flies become fully available to composers. In other words, it was only in 1917, that mankind could really jam with a fly. Perhaps, humanity’s disdain for these bugs has something to do with the obscurity of their unattainable keynote.
Seriously though! Bees sing B Sharps (C), and Flies sing F Sharps (F#). What’s next, the Beatles’ entire catalog is discovered, tabbed out on the walls of a French cave?
Yes, there will be a field guide.
And please do be kind to your fly friends. Just blow, and she’ll fly away.
The honey bee drones in C (C♮). Roll over the notehead below. Sometimes, in honor of his namesake, he’ll drone down to a B (B♮). Ya know, like “B/Bee/Be natural”? Does anyone take reality seriously when this kind of thing exists?
Mnemonic Device: Bees Buzz a B Sharp!
The tone C might just be the most popular tone in America next to the industrial B hum. It’s possible that bees inspired the hum of our machines. C Major is an incredibly popular key. It is the “white keys” on a piano. It is a standard key for musical toys and little keyboards. Wesminster Quarters, the bellsong, is often in the key of C. And for Jupiter’s sake, Bees buzz it all day long!
Please be kind to your apian friends, by letting them be!
Hey Kids! It’s the Teapot Song. Who is a little Teapot? I’m a little Teapot. For some reason, this song has been in Los Doggies’ head for the past few days. Couldn’t remember some of the lyrics though. Turns out, there’s a lost second verse.
“I’m A Little Teapot”
Second verse:
I’m a very special teapot,
Yes, it’s true,
Here’s an example of what I can do,
I can turn my handle into a spout,
Tip me over and pour me out!,
The teapot goes from self-conscious to swaggering in just two little verses. Her awakening in the first verse to the heating and pouring of her body, soon gives way to outright bravura in the second verse, even going so far as to proclaim herself “special”. For Jupiter’s sake, you’re just a little teapot.
The song was originally written by George Harry Sanders and Clarence Kelley in 1939, in order teach their very young dance students something to sing and dance to. It became enormously popular in America and overseas. It’s easy to see why:
That shit is awesome. Look at them noteheads. No you can’t roll over them. But they’re beautiful. No accidentals. Just down-beat all the way. Eighth notes and quarter notes; quavers and crotchets. Simple folk melodies and three-chord songs will never get boring. Ever.
Why even Jeopardy! uses the 4th phrase as its bumper. How many sudden quizical epiphanies has this little melody caused?
I’d like to invite Sugar Ray to play a round of musical Jeopardy, hosted by me, your host: George Alexander Trebek!
Just like Jeopardy!, Trebek! is almost always followed by an! exclamation! point!
The Clock Song plays everywhere all the time. It is the most popular rhythm in the world. Each tick and tock is a quarter beat, or crochet, worth a second.
The human heart also beats at around 60 beats/per/minute, just like clockwork. Moderate Rock Tempo of 120 bpm (the oft-used tempo in Pop Music) is the cut-time of clocks and hearts. None of these things are coincidences. Reality is a setup. Don’t believe it!
We live in a Civilized Song of clock beats and electric drones, on top of which, human and non-human animals breathe out melodies in and out of time.
People actually get married to this chord. At least in the Anglosphere they do. It’s from Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March”. After a monotonal ceremony of gifts, vows, and proclamation, this dissonant chord kicks in on pipe organ. It’s an A minor 6th, which has the satanic interval between the F# and C known as a tritone. Let’s give this matrimonial tritone a nice portmanteau name. Something like…Matritoney (mā’trə-tō’nē)?
How do corporations rule the world when corporations rule the world? Why, with simple melodies played on idiophones like the hand chimes pictured left.
Germans call them “ohrwurm”, meaning earworm. A catchy song crawls inside our ever-open ears like a musical parasite and lays egg-songs in our brains.
There is no more insidious melody on Earth than the dreaded NBC chimes.
The NBC chimes are derived from the popular bell-song Westminster Quarters. It consists of three notes – the Fifth (G), the Third (E), and the One or Root (C). The door bell has these last two notes, which form the interval of a Major Third.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the ABC melody has 4 notes. Whereas the NBC chimes have a distinctly Major flavor, the ABC melody is Minor all the way.
This modern take sounds like sonar pings. Disney is apparently broadcasting from a submarine.
I don’t know which melody is more nefarious – the child-like chimes of the Major NBC motif, or the slick Minor turnaround of the ABC pings? I’m not even going to get into the FOX fanfare, because let’s face it, TV sucks, and their cute major-minor melodies can go to hell.
HEY, aren’t there any birds to transcribe? Or any other new animals to make Yankovician parodies of?
Friends, these corporate melodies are but a passing footnote in the Los Doggies’s Electric Encyclopedia.
This here is an electric encyclopedia of music. Most everything is drag-overable, but sometimes you have to click on a widget to activate it. If you like what you see, please donate, or buy an album.
