Now back to your Netherworld where the Noise stalks your every step, and the most tonal things around are the bugs and birds―ya know, baddies?

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 Earth than the dreaded NBC chimes.

The NBC chimes are derived from the popular bell-song Westminster Quarters. It consists of three notes – the Fifth (G), the Third (E), and the One or Root (C). The door bell has these last two notes, which form the interval of a Major Third.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the ABC melody has 4 notes. Whereas the NBC chimes have a distinctly Major flavor, the ABC melody is Minor all the way.

This modern take sounds like sonar pings. Disney is apparently broadcasting from a submarine.

I don’t know which melody is more nefarious – the child-like chimes of the Major NBC motif, or the slick Minor turnaround of the ABC pings? I’m not even going to get into the FOX fanfare, because let’s face it, TV sucks, and their cute major-minor melodies can go to hell.

HEY, aren’t there any birds to transcribe? Or any other new animals to make Yankovician parodies of?

Friends, these corporate melodies are but a passing footnote in the Los Doggies’s Electric Encyclopedia.

Read more of this very boring history (http://www.radioremembered.org/chimes.htm).

The Major Third is what makes things Major. In the above example, the E is the Major Third of the C – the Tonic. There is an inherently happy quality to this interval. Babies love it, more than sad-sounding Minor Thirds. Why is this so? Because every tone that you hear, has secret overtones embedded in its timbre. These overtones form a scale known as the Harmonic Series.

If a piano plays a single C, then all of these other overtones, or harmonics, will color the sound of this C, letting you know that a piano is being struck, even if you can’t see the sound source. The Harmonic Series explains why we find certain harmonies consonant and others dissonant. Intervals and chords formed from the lowest overtones will result in sounds that are considered “consonant”. The higher overtones will produce harmonies that are considered “dissonant.” The Major Third is the 4th harmonic in the Series. This is why the convenience store ding sounds happy.

Another ubiquitous use of the Major Third is found in car horns. There is some ambiguity in the example below. The real interval is actually between a Major and a Minor Third, but it sounds happy enough. A car is also in motion, so the doppler shift will bend the pitch down as it passes.

It’s possible a pleasing interval was chosen for the car horn, to help sooth the savage motorist’s road-rage. Honking produces a happy interval, so it is probably more the volume of these car chords that make them come off as noisey rather than musical.

The popularity of the Major Third is due to one song – Wesminster Quarters – the bell song that tintinabulates twelve times a day. The Major Third marks the passing of each hour.

Though the Major Third is a happy interval, too much of a good thing can be bad. When you stack two Major Thirds on top of each other, you get this very evil sounding chord, known as an Augmented Chord.

What happens when you combine a Major and a Minor Third into one chord? You get the Hendrix Chord! The Hendrix chord is found in the Modern classical period, blues, and jazz, but Jimi ripped the shit out of this chord. Some chords need to be played on guitar.

You can hear this chord used in Purple Haze.

Bonus Trivia: A misheard lyric, as in “Excuse me, while I kiss this guy” is called a mondegreen.

So there you have it. Major Thirds are the Happy Interval. But too many of them leads to Evil. Combine a Happy Major Third with a Sad Minor Third, and you get Rocked hard.

I’m on da green.

     The last C that strikes the hour sounds more like a C minor, because of the audible Eb overtone. This type of modulation, from a Major key to the same key in Minor, is known as a Reverse Picardy.

     The “Westminster Quarters” is one of the most influential pieces of music in the urban soundscape. The Major Third in the third measure (from the E to the C) served as the inspiration for the Door Bell, Car Horn, and the Convenience Store. All are Major Thirds, a very happy interval indeed.
     If you live anywhere near a big clock, as I do, you probably hear this song at least 24 times a day, at every half, for 12 hours straight. Good thing “Westminster Quarters” rocks so much ass. When I hear it, I imagine the gods kicking in on weather drums. Most people are probably habituated to the “Quarters”, or probably don’t consider it much of a song.
     Still, it’s arguably the most played song on Earth, and I’ll hear it so much much more than my favorites, like Air Supply’s Lost in Love, or Rivers Cuomo’s Lover in the Snow. Certainly more than America’s That’s All I’ve Got to Tell You with vocals by Jeff Bridges.
     But probably not more than My Mother by the Chipettes.

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     This here mocking melody has many variations – neeners, nahs, and ners. It is sung to the tune of Ring around the Rosie. The dominant interval is a Minor Third, between the G (poo) and the E (poo).

     The following 2 note melody is delivered in rounds right before a game of Freeze Tag. The interval is a Whole Tone, between the E and D.
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     Both Nana Nana Poo Poo and Not It belong to the key C Major Pentatonic (5 note scale).

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     It is a happy key, for there are no semitones to create tension and longing. Most lullabies and folk diddies are in Major Pentatonic.

     COMING SOON: More playground songs like “Relay”, “Challenge”, and “Farted On.”

“Up a Whole Tone, down a Major Third, down an Octave, up a Perfect Fifth.”

In “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, grey aliens play these 5 Tones on their mothership’s synthesizer. Hollywood composer John Williams wrote the lick, and fashioned it after the 5 letter word “Hello”. Two of the tones are the same, just like the double L’s.

The 5 Tones belong to the Ab Major Pentatonic Scale

The Major Pentatonic scale is a happy floaty dream – ‘Playground’ tonality.
There is little tension. The intervals are widely spaced; there are no semitones.
This is because the Pentatonic scale omits two very important notes from the Diatonic (7-note) Scale.

These 2 notes form a Tritone, or “Devil’s Interval”. Sounded together, they are the most dissonant interval known to man. In studies done on babies, tritones produce a negative response. In the middle ages, this interval was banned by the church for being so awesomely evil.

When added to the Pentatonic scale, the tritone creates two semitones, between the III and IV, and the VII and VIII. The semitone produces the most tension in harmony, as it is the smallest interval in Equal Temperament.

It makes sense that greys would come at us with a Pentatonic scale. A nice, neutral scale, that wouldn’t offend Earth’s babies.

You wouldn’t want to encounter this:

Here’s the best scene ever from any movie.

There is just about every time signature in this song – 4, 5, 6, and 7 too. Who would’ve thought the music of ancient Syria was so progressive!?

I used the only recorded version I know of, transcribed by Prof. Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, from a CD called “Sounds from Silence”. She studied the clay tablets for 15 years and came up with this masterpiece.

Oldest Song by Prof. Anne Draffkorn Kilmer.

It is pretty cheesy sounding, but I felt it could be cheesier still. So I covered it. Also, if you notice her time signatures are even more ridiculous. I smoothed it out and at least made the eighth notes even, so that a drum and bass could throw down.

The Oldest Song shows us how little pop music has changed over the course of four centuries. The Song is in diatonic C Major, harmonized mostly in thirds, and contains a simple I IV V Progression – The ‘Three Golden Tones’ found in every musical culture at any time on the planet. For god’s sake, the first measure of the Oldest Song is almost identical to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy!

It’s no secret that babies like Major Chords above all others. There’s a simple explanation really. Major chords make us happy because every musical tone is a major chord!

Behold the Harmonic Series!

The first tone on the left (the low C) is known as the ‘fundamental.’ If you played this tone on a piano, it would resonate with all the other tones of the series, called ‘overtones’, or ‘harmonics’. The fundamental is the pitch that you hear, while the overtones define the timbre of the instrument – what distinguishes a piano from say, a flute.

Thus, every tone is actually a chord made up of infinite tones. Add up the dominant overtones in the series, and you’ve got yourself a Major Chord.

Mommies, be sure to coo your children to sleep in Major keys, and remain absolutely silent at the moment of their birth.

Here’s a little guitar diddy I made of the Harmonic Series. The scale name is known as ‘Lydian Dominant’. Enjoy my friends!

There’s also a great Article by musicologist Bob Fink, all about the Oldest Song.

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