Notes:
[1] Violin Concerto, Schumann, Robert.
[2] “Bring Me To Supper”, Anima MIDI. (Crazies happen at 0:59.)
[3] “One More Red Nightmare”, King Crimson. (God-awesome.)

Not all sounds are ear sounds. Some sounds are beyond ears, like head sounds. These sounds are known as tinnitus, and probably everybody experiences them at one time (as do our animal friends). You may temporarily hear a “ringing in your ears” after being exposed to triple forte rock music. These are just the “phantom frequencies” that are dying inside your brain, never to be heard again. Or you may be like me, and experience Chronic Tinnitus―a mildly annoying to deafeningly debilitating condition. Some sufferers have even cut off their own ears in the hopes of exorcising the sound. Of course, head sounds need to be decapitated. There have even been reports of objective tinnitus―nerve noise so loud that it can be heard outside of the head in which it is produced.

Luckily, my own tinnitus is quiet enough that it only annoys me. Besides, these days there’s so much external noise around to mute our inner music, that I doubt anyone would mind a girl with an audible mind.

Now, before you start thinking that I drummed my ears into oblivion playing in rowdy rowdy rock bands for too long, I’ve always had this tinnitus, and it’s always the same sustained nerve note―a high-pitched D. Check it out!

Annoying right? Like a cricket. Long after my aging ears can no longer detect this frequency, it’ll still be in my head.

Under careful auscultation, my tinnitus is composed of a tsunami of sine waves. The root is a distant D tone, as if sounding over the cerebral horizon, backed by an ugly Ives chord of insect spectrals, coming in jerky crescendos. Underneath it all, the blanketed bass drumming of my heart kicks out of time.

Oh tinnitus―fated fermata―prepared by the Great Conductor, who with downbeat baton, denotes the ictus of death. Will it resolve on the one? Or slowly decay into black noise.

The openings empty out their last sound. From every mountaintop, let tinnitus ring.

In locomotion, the heartbeat expresses itself as skipping. Children love to skip, and like myself, often can’t help tapping beats out on their environment.

Our love of 60 b/p/m iambic shuffle music and poetry is shaped during our time in the womb, while listening to the constant pulse of our mothers’ biomusic. The loudest sounds a fetus hears are her heartbeat – the four sounds of the heart (in waltzes and gallops) – the bruits of the blood, nerve noise, and all the sounds of the social environment filtered in through the subwoofer of her womb. This intrauterine soundtrack is like listening to riddim underwater – big bassy waves and strong pulsing rhythms.

So what to play for your newborn’s First Sound? We know babies like Major, bass and drum music, at Moderate rock tempos. Should the First Sound include the froufrou of a scrub’s shoes? The syncopated applause of family? Or a 4/4 Lamaze beat – a natural extension of mom’s 60 bpm heartbeat – jammed out upon delivery by the Hospital House Band? Or should, as William Burroughs suggests, the newborn be treated to silence as her First Sound?

Of course, it you want to sever the child’s sonic umbilicus right away, have the doctors play your newborn some Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Comments are always welcome. It’s easy and anonymous.
Love, Homey

♥ These are my Heart Sounds…

Using the falsetto, or head voice, any man can sing like a woman, or more accurately, sing like a little boy.

Try out your falsetto at home now. Sing like the boy who dreamed he was a man. Use your mind to change the shape of your vocal chords. Let your head do the vibrating. Contrary to popular belief, women can do it too!

Ain’t nothin’ false about falsetto.
That shit is real. They should call it realsetto.

Musical dimorphism is found in many species. Check out the calls of the Canada Goose. The male sings "a-honk" and the female sings "a-hink".

The male goose honks an F, while the female hinks a G. The interval between them is called a whole tone, the 2nd smallest next to the semitone.

The hoots of the male and female owls are a major third apart, meaning they are 4 steps away. When their calls overlap, it makes for some sweet harmony.

                 Los Doggies supports dimorphism in sex and music!

Best Falsetto Ever
100 Million by SDRE

The need for clapping on the One is born out of fear and distrust of Rests; those unplayed spaces between the notes, collectively known as black noise.

Here are the four basic colors of noise. White noise is the shit on your TV. Pink noise is in vogue for neurophonic meditatiors. Brown noise makes any sentient being with an asshole immediately shit upon hearing the slightest decibel.

It’s impossible for most people to allow a rest to sound without fulfilling the urge to color that space with noise. A socially acceptable kick drum would help to standardize crowd rhythms in the right direction. May I recommend the Floor Stomp?

Clapping on the Ones is unacceptable. Why do white people do this? Haven’t they heard “We Will Rock You” before, or been to a B-ball game where “We Will Rock You” is correctly stomped and clapped out before their white eyes?

Here’s a most pitiful display of Clapping on the One. Of course, it’s the Eagles.

For Jupiter’s sake!
Clapping on the One certainly has its place, like say in a Hoedown. Although in this case, each clap is often accompanied by a floorstomp. Plus, in a hoedown, the feel is down all the way, with empahsis on every beat, so Clapping on the One makes more sense. Check out this song from the movie “Willow”.

NEXT BLOG POST: The Abolishment of Applause!

     The Minor Third sounds like this:

     Out there on the playground, melodies have a little legroom. Some kids might sing Minor Thirds, and others will sing Whole Tones. And certain little bastards will only sing semitones.

     The Minor Third is more of a child’s interval. Children are naturally melodic, and speak and sing freely in giant steps. But by the time they start playing “Butt’s Up”, they can barely muster a Whole Tone. Their intervals continue to flatten until they are a typical monotone adult.
     Or maybe the Minor Third is just too wide an interval to sing when you’re butt’s about to go up.

     It’s likely that “Relay”, “Challenge”, “Farted On”, and “Not It”, were inspired by “Nanny Nanny Poo Poo”, the most popular playground melody, which is actually a parody of “Ring around the Rosie”, a song going back to the 18th century.

     COMING SOON: Olly Olly Oxen Free!

     
     
     When a ball lands out of bounds, the player who fetches it can sing a “Relay” to beseech her fellow players to cut off her throw to the wall. A “Challenge” is sung by the other players to deny her “Relay” request. Both figures cover the interval of a Minor Third from G to E.

     The dis below can be used in just about any schoolyard game or life situation.

     ”Farted On” is also a Minor Third. It’s a little more mature version of “Nana Nana Poo Poo” although the melody is practically the same, and both have a swung rhythm. “Farted On” is usually preceded by a falling “Ohhhhhhhhh!”. You don’t wanna be on the receiving end of one of those.

     ”Into” is short for interference. An “Into” is sung when a ball hits an object out of play. It is identical in melody and rhythm to a “Not It”, at a slower tempo.

     In the previous post, I wrote that these playground melodies were in C Major Pentatonic, because they originate from “Ring around the Rosie”, a Major folk song. But now I’m thinking that out there on the blacktop, these figures take on a new tonality – the very closely related E Minor Pentatonic. The E acts as a resolution in all of these melodies.

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     Know who else likes E Pentatonic?
     Jimi Fuckin’ Hendrix!
     Try jammin’ along with some Nanapoops, Not It’s, Into’s, and Farted On’s.