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 [...]
Archive of posts tagged Major Chords
Major Thirdsies
The Major Third is probably the most popular interval in America. Everytime you walk into a convenience store, it plays for you. The Major Third is what makes things Major. In the above example, the E is the Major Third of the C – the Tonic. There is an inherently happy quality to this interval. [...]
Westminster Quarters
The clock tower song “Westminster Quarters” was composed by William Crotch in 1793. The last C that strikes the hour sounds more like a C minor, because of the audible Eb overtone. This type of modulation, from a Major key to the same key in Minor, is known as a Reverse Picardy. The [...]
Playground Melodies
English is atonal. Adults are monotonal. But the kids are all singsong   This here mocking melody has many variations – neeners, nahs, and ners. It is sung to the tune of Ring around the Rosie. The dominant interval is a Minor Third, between the G (poo) and the E (poo). The following 2 note [...]
Close Encounters of the Major Third Kind
“Up a Whole Tone, down a Major Third, down an Octave, up a Perfect Fifth.” In “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, grey aliens play these 5 Tones on their mothership’s synthesizer. Hollywood composer John Williams wrote the lick, and fashioned it after the 5 letter word “Hello”. Two of the tones are the same, [...]
The Oldest Song
This cover of the Oldest Song was sequenced using triangle waves, casio drum kits, synth voxes, a toy Chinese piano, and some wind samples. It was originally a hymn written for two voices, maybe a lyre too. This cover is more akin to the original alien’s version, that lost some of its fi, when imparted [...]
