Do You Know Your CBA’s?
Have you ever been on your way to a gig, when the police and their portamento cries pull-over your tour-car, and force your band to perform all manner of hazing rituals and musical games? Musicians and civilians alike are expected to recite things never learned by rote, or learned at all—retrograded songs, inverted childhood concepts—and all the while, maintaining bodily integrity.
Well, hold on there officer, I’ve got a mnemonic device in the glove.
Here’s your ABC’s in reverse. Of course, it may be incriminating if you sing the colloquial sections backwards.
♬ ♬ ♬ “Me, with play you won’t time next, C’s, B A, My know I now. Z ,and Y, X, Double U, V, UTS, RQP, ONMLK, JIHG, FEDCBA.” ♬ ♬ ♬
So when you reverse the above song, you’ll hear the familiar tune to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”.
The “Alphabet Song” and “Twinkle, Twinkle” are all based on the same folk melody written by…get this: Fuckin’ Mozart!
Next time your band gets pulled over, why not subject the cops to a breath test of your own—a “Hold-Your-Breath-The-Longest” Test!
Because of your melodic inversions and lung capacity, I’m letting you boys off with a warning. Rock on. And rock safe.
(And if you couldn’t get enough, here’s the original…)
Bustin’ Makes Me Feel Good
The high B and C on a pianoforte drive the spirits away. Every house should have a baby Steinway, just in case, for bustin’s sake.
Oh, but don’t you go anywhere poltergeists! You can rap upon the walls, bewitch the acoustics and electronics. Add some much-needed white noise. Watch Murray hit this little semitone upside down on the youtube below.
I just love piano humor. Ya know? Like Victor Borge?
Owlisimo
Igor Stravinsky relates the following story in his “Conversations with Robert Craft” (Now with computerized sounds!):
“On a recent visit to Asolo, to see the composer Malipiero, I was strongly reminded of D’Annunzio. Malipiero has a most extraordinary and not entirely un-D’Annunzian house himself, a fine Venetian building on a hillside. One enters under a Latin inscription and plunges into darkest night. The dark is in deference to pairs of owls who, from covered cages in obscure corners, hoot the two notes,
in tune with Malipiero’s piano after he plays them. There is evidence in the garden of affection for other of God’s feathered creatures: chickens have been buried in marked graves; Malipiero’s chickens die of old age.”
Reading this little passage so many years ago, I realized animals can make notes as well. Not just sounds, but music too. Non-human animal music is as glorious as any human, aleatoric, or industrial music.
The breakup of the narrative with a single little score, provided the inspiration for the blog you’re reading now. Notes and text, side by side, like they used to be, when poetry was sung. When Beowulf was a Pop Song.
I’m not sure what kind of owls Malipiero kept on his property, as his personal strigine piano tuners, but they apparently hooted a high Eb and D over and over (Drag over the score above). That’s a semitone interval, the very smallest interval there is.
Think of Igor, entering this strange manor, under moonlight, with the portamento winds blowing, and two bassy owls taunting the poor Russian with their darkling semitones. Not unlike, Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, a completely semitonal score featuring F’s and F#’s.
Thank you Stravinsky, you caprine-miened Rusky!
Simiophone
Yo, listen to this gorilla’s territorial jam on the youtube below.
First, the gorilla warms up with a series of ascending hoots like an owl, like a walking bass line, before pummeling out a thunderous drum fill on the membranophone of his own body, where every pec is a tom tom. This 4/4 chest beat carries for miles, letting other silverbacks in the jamboree know who’s got the fastest fists, or tightest pecadiddles or whatever. (And these guys are freakin’ vegan too!)
Gorillas use music for intimidation. They wardrums are found right there on they chests. It’s probably the same for human drummers. Los Doggies is all for raging against the dying of the machines and whatnot. It’s like the Yellow Emperor said,
Music begins with fear, and because of this fear there is dread, as of a curse. Then I add the weariness, and because of the weariness there is compliance. I end it all with the confusion and because of the confusion there is stupidity. And because of the stupidity there is the Way, the Way that can be lifted up and carried around wherever you go.
Musicquito
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!
b————————————————–
g————————————————–
d————————————————–
a————————————————–
e————————————————–
The Interspecies Orchestra is jamming all the time. Try not to kill or be killed by your bandmates. Peace babies!
Fly Sharp
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.
