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.