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 “Westminster Quarters” […]
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Wesminster Quarters
The clock tower bell song that peals from the belfry 12 times a day is called “Westminster Quarters” and was composed by William Crotch in 1793. It was first heard on Big Ben—the great bell in London—but now every clock tower wants to be like Big Ben, because he the Best Ben. In the old […]
Verifone Melody
The old sounds of money were so pleasing they could fill a symphony, or a psychedelic blues song. From the cha-ching of old timey cash drawers to the bling-bling of the petrodollar, money used to spread euphony like disease. Cash registers rang like slot machines and everyone had dollar-signs in their eyes. It’s enough to […]
TikTok Outro Sound
TikTok is the latest spyware that all the kids are cuckoo for. You can see every kind of degeneracy on it, from prepubescents twerking in dishabille to fully-grown adults twerking in scrubs, although it’s still not as bad as YouTube with its vibrant monkey-torture community. Every platform is pretty uniform these days; they’re all TikTok. […]
Amazon Chime
Everyone’s favorite megacorp (but nobody’s favorite network), Amazon, uses a throwback chime for their original productions. NBC used real chimes back in the day, but now it’s all digitally created by some EDM nerd on a DAW, or maybe by the Almighty AI Itself. As far as chimes go, the Amazon chimes are top-tier. It’s […]
Nailed It
There is a fine line between the spoken word and the musical tone. The more a phrase is repeated the more musical it becomes. This is illustrated in the speech-to-song illusion. Repeat a phrase over and over and listen as it magically transforms into a melody. This can be accomplished much quicker with sarcasm. Sarcasm […]
Duolingo: The Sound of Failure
In our last post, we covered the Duolingo “Sound of Success,” a happy Major Third inspired by door bells, store chimes, dial tones and car horns, which were in turn inspired by Big Ben’s bell song “Westminster Quarters.” Now we turn our aural gaze to a more dissonant, evil sound—The Sound of Failure. If the […]
