Traffic is the biggest brass band on the streets. In between swelling swooshes of many mediums, vehicles of every key sing onomatopoeic songs―car horn honks, backup truck beeps, klaxon awoogas, train choos, and bicycle bell brrngs―all day and all night and all afternoon, fading in and fading out, with timbres thrown back to the Jazz […]
Archive of posts tagged Major Thirds
Super Mario Melodies
スーパーマリオブラザーズYou and I, we live in a Netherworld of Noise. That’s why I’m taking you to Happy Tone Town. Everything that used to make noise, now makes a tone. Except blocks―they’re still noisey. But get this: Money sings! You can hear the coins klup into your pockets. And it’s logical too: Jumping makes a bendy […]
Corporate Melodies
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 […]
Major Thirdsies
The Major Third is probably the most popular interval in America. Every time 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 […]
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 “Westminster Quarters” […]
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 melody is delivered […]
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, […]
