» Industrial Music

The Train in Spain Falls Majorly on the Fade

Los Doggies — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:52:29 +0000

Trains are in major keys, just like cars. The rhythms of the railroad helped shape Jazz and Rock music, like the shuffle of the human heart and the swung gait of a walking horse, major trains in 4/4 paved the way for the dominance of drumming in all music (after a brief buoyant classical period), where even songs without drums would somehow have drums, even Nemocore, even everything, and the ‘riddim’ as the Rastas know it, would mean everything to every song.

The Train Chord below is Major, as are all Train Chords, because of the Harmonic Series, the secret scale inside every tone that is itself a Major Chord.

For realistic railroad rhythms, rev the wheels up with multiple drags over the tracks. When the crescendos crisscross, drag onto the noteheads and let the cursor settle momentarily, then drag it off onto the staves or notationless Byss for a short rest. Finally, let the cursor settle on the noteheads till the doppler shifts.

>B Major 6th (1st Inversion)

This is the AirChime K5LA. One dissonant motherfucker. K Series. 5 horn bells. Low-manifold mount. American Factory tuning. Tuned to the Grid.Tuned to the Earth. The K5LA is a B Major 6th pentachord (D#, F#, G#, B, D#), but because of the inverted voicing, it can also sound like a G# Minor 7 (2nd Inversion), the B’s relative minor key. Yet due to the American city’s natural electric emphasis of the B-tone, the train chord will sound major from space.

Selfless Plug: Look for realistic railroad riddim on the upcoming 2011 Los Doggies album!

Beep, Beep

Los Doggies — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 03:58:56 +0000

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 choo’s, and bicycle bell brrngs―all day and all night and all afternoon, fading in and fading out, with timbres thrown back to the Jazz Era, when everything was a-beepin’ and a-boppin’ with syncopated stop-sign rests, and Doppler shift decays like the slide of a trombone on the very last ictus, into the howling road rhythms ahead.

The classic horn of popular automobiles (what you would call a honk as opposed to a beep) is tuned between a Major and Minor Third Interval. The oft-played double beat is like that of a Morse Code “A” (dit, dah (· —)), and was probably copied from railroad engineer beats. It can be notated as below: quaver, crotchet rest, crotchet, quaver rest, crotchet rest, assuming we’re in 4/4 time.

Minor Third = 300 cents
Car Horn Third = 362 cents
Major Third = 400 cents

It is not quite the happy Major Third , nor is it the sad Minor Third, but rather somewhere in between, a unique Car Horn Third, that evokes the spectrum of triadic emotions. At around 360 cents, almost halfway between Major and Minor, the Car Horn Third is similar to an Hendrix Chord which features both Thirds.

The car horn harmony was intentionally tuned like other Major Thirds in our American soundscape―the door bell, shop ding, and telephone dial tone―for its likeness to the third measure of the bell song Westminster Quarters. Ding, dong. The Major Third is found early in the Harmonic Series, making it a consonant interval, perfect for soothing the savage motorist.

Next we have the backup beep. Unlike the electric horn timbres of cars, trucks, buses, and ships, the backup beep is a pure sine wave, a series of F#6′s in an even crotcheted tempo.

If the Electric Tonic of America is a flatted B, then the F# reversal tone of trucks and buses forms a Perfect fifth interval―the Dominant. There are many different car horns, but the popular one above forms a Major 7th Interval with the Grid. Thus, the most popular chord of the streets is a B Major 7th. Everything is attuned according to the buzzing of the bees.

I like Traffic.

Elevator Music

Los Doggies — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:07:00 +0000

The Industrial Music that surrounds us is bellful, horny, and white with noise. Dings and blares come from every clock and car, the electric B-flat hums from every outlet, and the streets are seldom silent. If one were to form a SimsBand, covering the music of each day, it would have plenty of brass and bells, and the rainbow of noise would rise in a high drowning arc across the sky. We’d bring all the bellboys back of course. Clear the bats from the bellfry. Make way for the old timey elevator operators to return to their lifts, and once again man those tiny tintinabulations by hand.

Behold the Elevator Bell Ding! How many times have you heard this little tone in your life? Just take the amount of times you rode a lift, and multiply by two, because this bell dings up and down, open and closed—twice in one ride. It only takes two notes to make a melody after all.

Unlike the door bell, which covers the interval of a Major Third, the Elevator Ding is monotonal, right on the edge between noise and tone. (Click on the the wave to the right for frequency analysis.) The most dominant tone seems to be an F, but the spectrum is very messy. There are strong spikes in the G# range, as well as an E. Most importantly, there is a very high piercing C#, as well as a lower one, that make a musical tone out of an otherwise noisy sound.

Add up the dominant tones in this messy noisy wave, and you get a C# Minor chord. Try dragging over the chord below, quickly scroll back up, and ding the elevator bell to see how close they are (The elevator bell is actually a quarter tone less than a C#).

Who knew elevator music was so sad?

iFart computer sounds :) (o)- – -

Los Doggies — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 17:04:54 +0000

What are the most popular sounds around us? Are they musical or noisy? Artful or aleatoric? Do you hear more birdsong than pop song? Is the human speech around you monotonal, monotonous, or musical? Do you wear headphones all day, or does your own cortex hallucinate music for you?

Friends, there are no more insidious sounds out there than the perpetual music of our machines. Along with the Grid Hum and corporate earworms, the synthetic sounds of personal computers earn their place in the Industrial-Musical complex. These are the most popular sounds around us – neither words nor lyrics, nor melodies, nor even our own effluvia surround us so much as these perverse atonalities. The computer literacy involved in turning these presets off, combined with the hopeless habituation of users to their presence, makes the following samples some of the most played sounds on Earth ever. Unlike the B-flat hum, which will drone on into the twilight of humanity, we have the choice right now to silence this digital flatulence.

Behold the Mac fart!

This farting sound is actually attached to the volume controls on an Apple computer, so that every time you turn it up or down, it fires off a fizzle of these pathetic robotic imitations of our beautiful body score – that big ass brass, like a Spike Jones concert, perfectly blending comedy and music.

There is an analogous sound on a Window’s machine, the so-called “System Notification” that resembles a lip-pop – another offensive natural sound that emerges from our bodies. Now why would a Gates, or a Jobs, want to make machines that reproduce our flatus for us? The answer lies in the Doomsday Seed Vault.

For all their irksome qualities, these body-based synths are nothing compared to the truly tonal variety, such as the Window’s “Asterisk”. This is another of a million alarms that come ready to rock each PC. Like the Hum of American machines, it is a B tone.

What kind of instrument is that? Does it sound like any instrument you can even name? It’s pure computer tone.

Please, people: Get in your control panels and turn this shit off. I can shut my eyes from the horrors of this world, but I ain’t got no earlids!

The 4/4 Life

Los Doggies — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:07:44 +0000

The Clock Song plays everywhere all the time. It is the most popular rhythm in the world. Each tick and tock is a quarter beat, or crochet, worth a second.

The human heart also beats at around 60 beats/per/minute, just like clockwork. Moderate Rock Tempo of 120 bpm (the oft-used tempo in Pop Music) is the cut-time of clocks and hearts. None of these things are coincidences. Reality is a setup. Don’t believe it!

We live in a Civilized Song of clock beats and electric drones, on top of which, human and non-human animals breathe out melodies in and out of time.

Save the clock beat!

The Loudest Note in the World

Los Doggies — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:25:40 +0000

With the ears of an angel, the loudest sounds you’d hear in outerspace coming from Earth would be noise. Ocean noise is the loudest, followed by lightning, volcanoes, and industrial noise. These pitchless rhyhms rule the soundtrack of our planet.

The loudest musical tones you’d hear would also come from machines, that of the electric power grid, or mains. The electric hum produced from power transmission is ubiquitous and provides the keynote of our lives. It’s the inescapable tone, if you use appliances, live near street lights, work in a factory, or do pretty much anything.

Because of differing voltages in the East and West, there are two dominant tones found in the power system.

In North America, the Grid plays a 60 hertz tone, halfway between a B and Bb. In Europe, the Mains plays a 50 hz tone, about a quarter tone sharper than a G.

Our aural angel would mostly hear this G tone from outerspace, because the European voltage is most popular throughout the world. The map below shows the distribution between the two tones. The red denotes the flat B, while the blue denotes the sharpG.

Between the two power tones is roughly a minor third interval. Go back up top, and simultaneously sound the two power tones.

The loudest interval to angelic ears is the minor third.

From outerspace, the G Minor reigns supreme, providing harmony to the oceanic and industrial riddim. It is our planetary chord. If the cosmos run anything like in Close Encounters, then the Earth’s G Minor Chord will function diplomatically.

The Minor is known as the "sad chord". This is because there are more dissonant overtones at play, than in a major chord.

Happier right? Babies like major better than minor. They should know, because they know nothing.

Angels prefer the minor though. Cause they live in outerspace.

Epilogue:
The soundtracks of our lives are provided for by machines. Once upon a time, the birds sang songs louder than anybody. But for now it’s:

Power tones! Power tones!! Power tones!!!