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 […]
Archive of posts tagged Westminster Quarters
Duolingo: The Sound of Success
There’s a new Major Third in town. Move over church chimes and door bells. Eat your heart out, Big Ben. This new Major Third is nasty—it’s in F-Sharp! The Duolingo sound for correct guesses is a pair of sixteenths notes from F# to A#—the happy part of a Major chord. A reverse door bell: the […]
Cuckoo
The cuckoo has long been a symbol of cuckoldry from Shakespeare to the Disney channel, but did you know this musical bird also inspired the door bell and the bell itself? The common cuckoo calls in major thirds, and almost exclusively in C major. Click on the score below to listen. Common Cuckoo Call “Go-koo,” […]
Rail Door Chime
Over the holidays, I had the privilege of riding the Long Island Rail with all of its whistles and bells. It was the night before Christmas when all through the train, I struggled to stay awake to the gentle jazz of the wheels on the tracks. The doors even signaled their openings and closings with […]
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 […]
uh Phone
there is a phone call that makes a kind of native guatemalan greeting everytim it calls you. you may have heard this thing. i can’t remember what phone it’s for. i’m not good with the brandnames. it seems the phone companies and other multinationals are following the old-time inspiration of classic TV and radio by […]
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 […]
