Minor Thirds
But the songiest protests of the Occupation are the call-and-answer chants such as “This Is What Democracy Looks Like” which encompasses an actual musical interval. Drag and click on the score below to hear the Minor Third interval between the antecedent phrase “Show me what…” and the consequent phrase “This is what…”

Democracy is clapping on the ones without shame.

Sometimes it’s a Major Third interval, when the antecedent protestor is over-zealous, but usually it’s Minor all the way. Chanting Minor Thirds is a popular way to go, as Seconds are too small for anyone to care about, and Major Thirds and Fourths are too big for anyone to sing. But even the noisy mobs at a modern day sporting event can sing perfectly pitched, albeit profane, Minor Thirds. Minor Thirds are what makes minor music sad, and there is sadness here too. All minor 3rds are the blues, as the saying goes.

Here’s my personal favorite, “Shame” by OWS. It is a 4/4 song, as they all are, with staccato accents on the ones.

Like a thousand crickets crying out from a flaming field. Like every siren of every squad car from your local precinct all sounding at once. I have to jam with it.

By the way, did I mention:

All politiks is art: It fart.

They call to you in 1-note songs like crickets, then disappear every time you are near. It’s almost a 4/4 beat―keeping time like a heartbeat and other natural metronomes, sometimes approaching clockbeat click-track perfection if only for a measure, but usually tempoless and free like laundromat rhythms.

In a field of crickets, their staccato chirps smear together into one thick wavering drone. Imagine the male citizens of your country all singing together like this, in a field.

This is a field cricket who chirps in D, the kind I usually hear out my window. They play with their wings and hear with their legs. They dig amps into the Earth, all to impress the ladies.

Trill, rest, trill, rest, like Verse-Chorus-Verse. Each trill is perceived as a single tone, sometimes a D, sometimes flat or sharp. Sometime D natural straight-up. Concert D.

If we slow down their song 2 octaves, we can see each trill hovers around D and C#. Crickets fire off a quick burst of staccato wingtones and then rest for about the same amount of time, creating a pulsing beat.

If we slow it down yet another 2 octaves, we can see each single tone in the trill actually bends down from D to C#, and sometimes back up again. Plus, there are even smaller rests between these individual tones of the trill.

So not only is he hitting D’s and C#’s in lickety-quick trills, but he also bends each single tone between these two tones. There is a kind of holophonic [sic] principle at play here, whereby each tone contains the whole. While we hear a collection of single tones jumping up and down a half step, each perceived tone is made of many shorter tones that also jump up and down a half step, and finally, each of these shorter tones also bends up and down a half-step―a triple-tiered semitonal holophonic bug song of love.

Like any chirp tune enthusiast, I keep a cricket in a cage…
Can I play.

“All My Friends are Insects” by Weezer is in the key of E. It starts off with E Major for the “earthworm” and “butterfly” verses, but then promptly switches to E Minor for the “dragonfly” verse. The subsequent guitar solo keeps rocking the E Minor key in Munsters style, until the song modulates once more back to E Major for the remaining bridge and verse. Thus, it uses a reverse picardy in switching from E Major to E Minor, and then picardies again back to E Major. The structure is: Major-Minor-Major.

Thanks to Weezer for their picardy contribution, and also for correctly using gender-specific pronouns in reference to non-human animals. “It” is sung for the gender-bending earthworm, “She” for the pretty butterfly, and “He” for the colorful powerful dragonfly.

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.