Beginning at the top with a low A and following clockwise, we cycle through the 12 tones of Equal Temperament, spanning seven octaves, ascending a fifth at a time, till we return once again to the octave and back to the A. Drag your mouse in clockwise circles to experience the incredible power of the octave harnessed in circular high-fives.

Here it is on a piano, using the full range.

The Circle of 5ths is a classic visualization of the 12 tones and their relationships first illustrated by Russian theorist Nikolay Diletsky in his 1679 treatise Grammatika.

If we draw a straight line down from the A, we divide the octave in half, and get the half-octave, or tritone. Inscribing a cross inside the circle, we get the symmetrical diminished scale (A F# D# C), which divides the octave into 4 equal minor third intervals.

The tritone interval is exactly 600 cents, used to be called ‘Diabolus in Musica’ in the Middle Ages, and was long avoided in musical practice for being too dissonant. It flourished in modernism and metal music, and continues to be popular today anytime a composer wants to invoke the dark lord in song without having to reverse the tape.

Keeping with our occult mindset, if we combine some geometry with some music we get the fledgling pseudoscience of geomusic. That’s not geo-music, like Earthy Music, like the Hum of our Planet, or the Lightning Tones of the Atmosphere, but geomusic. Pronounce it like geometry, and then never say it again.

The octave divided into 3 equal intervals gives us the augmented chord, as well as a curious symbol of esoteric traditions.

The circumscribed triangle above is a popular symbol of Occultists, Kabbalists, Rosicrucians, Masons, Satanists, and Uroborosists etc. The equilateral triangle inside a circle has been used as the AA logo, and can be seen on the back of a $1 in the Great Seal of the US. In the occult it is called the Devil’s Door, and used to summon daemons. It is a symbol of authoritative agencies, ritual magickal practitioners, and math students.

The tones found at the vertices of the triangle form an augmented chord (A C# F). While the above circumscribed cross divided the octave into 4 minor thirds, the circumscribed triangle divides the octave into 3 equal major thirds.

The stacking of happy-sounding Major Third intervals results in a very scary-sounding chord. It almost sounds like a triangle trapped inside a circle. The dissonance hides behind consonance, like evil lurking beneath a thin veneer of goody-two-shoeness.

Men have found the dark lord in backwards pop songs, detuned intervals, and now smack dab in the holiest of holies, the Circle of Fifths.

The dissonance draws out our delusion. In both the augmented chord and the diminished chord, there is the need for resolution, and since none is provided, there is tension. Tense sweet tension.

It reminds of what the Yellow Emperor used to say,

Music begins with fear, and because of this fear there is dread, as of a curse. Then I add the weariness, and because of the weariness there is compliance. I end it all with the confusion and because of the confusion there is stupidity. And because of the stupidity there is the Way, the Way that can be lifted up and carried around wherever you go.

Notes:

Musical Geometry – the circumscribed triangle idea as applied to the circle of 5ths comes from this very questionable documentary (though it probably originated elsewhere). Seriously, don’t click that.

Tritone Paradox – Satanic Psychotronic Ritual. Do it with friends!

How to Circumscribe Yourself – a triangle is born inside a circle

Anyway, here’s the 9 frequencies—’God’s Perfect Circle of Sound’—as well as their solfege names, and the nearest note in equal temperament. The note “Mi”, is actually sharper than the closest C tone (an octave above middle C) and is known as the Gold Tone which if listened to enough can perform transformation and miracles like DNA repair. You won’t find this scale notated anywhere else folks! And have yourself a listen as to why. Drag over the black stemmed noteheads.

This ancient scale was discovered in the Bible, Gregorian Chants, Sanskrit Chants, and inside the author’s own ass. It’s not that I’m jealous of Len Horowitz’s cottage industry of healing tones and his ability to monetize his awesome nonsense, but just look at that hideous scale! Is it F-minor? F-sharp? It appears to be a tetrachord, and a pentachord, or some such throwback to the Greeks. Or a modernist polytonal thing—half F-minor, half E-major. Everyone loves the number nine! Except, I already worship se7en. Shoot.

It isn’t actually anything, because it’s based entirely on abstract numbers, and their general usage in music as well as math. It’s exactly the same as setting the Schumann Resonance to music, and calling it the Schumann Scale—the music of sacred lightning. Except in this latter case, it’s clearly a joke, a net-surfer’s curio.

The Solfeggio scale doesn’t seem to be notated anywhere in the healing tones literature. God likes his frequencies measured in Hertz anyway. The Biological Apocalypse will not be notated!

Compare with the equine version.
The Car Turn Signal swings out of time with any kind of music playing on your car radio. It swings in and of itself, with its own unique feel like some funky-ass drummer. Medeski, Martin, and Wood have a similar feel—dump truck funk, I believe. And of course, the horse.

Epilogue:
The Automobile signaled the advent of the Jazz Age. With its brassy car horn and chugging constant rhythm, the automobile brought the far-flung romance of trains back to the streets. It makes a lot of sense to signal the new swinging era with a swinging Turn Signal. Too much sense actually.

The fan fallout today is not nearly as bad as say, America’s sickening realization that not only Milli, but Vanilli too, had been ‘lipping’ all along. Really, nobody believes that TV is real, but maybe the aesthetic illusion sort of conditions the audience to expect that something real is happening somewhere to create the illusion. Somewhere in the holographic universe, there really are rappers rapping that aren’t really holograms themselves, we like to believe.

Of course, there are artists today who still sing the Banner live, like Kelly Clarkson (luv u grl;), or The Fray who maybe could’ve used an auto-tuner on their guitar. It’s probable that the pre-recorded track Beyoncé used to lip-synch over was itself pre-auto-tuned and produced with all the nicenings and sweetenings of a modern recording studio, with digital tools that flatten out all the human flaw, and smear away all the imperfect goodness that is the human voice and soul.

It is befitting that Beyoncé lip-sang the Banner; the whole event is a farce. Everything about it is empty spectacle. The Inauguration is theater, like a movie theater, not like stage theater. What do people think this is, a 3-D IMAX showing of Les Miz (2012) where the actors really sing right there in the scene? Is it any surprise that human puppets prefer the voices of human robots?

Anyway, more interestingly for the purposes of this blog: whoever arranged this Banner decided to end it with a humorous musical cliché.

Beyoncé sings this Banner in E Major (the Banner traditionally is in the key of B-flat Major). The final cadence uses borrowed chords from E minor to create a harmonic progression that picardies from E minor to E Major. It’s called an Aeolian Cadence, because the borrowed chords belong to the Aeolian mode, or natural minor.

This cheeky little aeolian cadence is is a running musical joke among musicians, found in countless songs, can be tacked on to the end of anything, has been around for a few centuries, and is perfectly befitting Beyoncé’s bravado bravura and her bunk Banner.

The intention here was probably to go “big” or go home, like some studio executive kept telling the conductor to go “BIGGER!”, but in light of the the whole performance being revealed to be a sham, the intended epicness of the Aeolian Cadence comes off exactly as it should—ridiculous and regretful, heightening the pretense of the moment as only music can do for the theater.

Epilogue:

A few examples of the “bVI bVII I Aeolian Cadence”:

“With a Little Help From My Friends” by The Beatles (In the beginning and the end).
“Super Mario Bros. Ground Theme” by Koji Kondo (To the Bridge: dada da dada dada dada)
“Slave to the Traffic Light” by Phish (teased a few times during the middle and the end)
“Birth” by Focus (Wait for it…)

Can you think of other examples of this cadence? Please put them in the comments section below.

More importantly, for this blog, ringtones are one of the most common forms of musical pollution.

The original ringtone is from the 1991 Nokia phone playing an old guitar waltz melody, Francisco Tarrega’s “Gran Vals”. Drag over the noteheads, or press play to hear the entire phrase. Try to line up the bass notes to hear how it creates a sense of resolution.

Yeah, they don’t make melodies like this anymore—so gay and dignified, spread-eagled across the major key to hit each and every note in turn, almost symmetrical, but even better than perfect parallel symmetry; it makes so much musical sense, it seems as though it’s always been here, since the 90′s when it was copyrighted, to the 1890′s (circa) when it was conceived.

Together, the melody and the bass create a Perfect Cadence—a harmonic progression that demands resolution. In other words, the Perfect Cadence takes you home. Thus, the 1st Ringtone was selected for cadential reasons, the sense of resolution to the Root, just like a phone call, connects you with home. The Perfect Cadence is one of the most satisfying musical devices in popular music, and usually occurs at the end of the song, or like in “Gran Vals” to signify the end of a phrase.

It is estimated that the Nokia ringtone is heard 20,000 times per second, 1.8 billion times per day, far superior to the number of times “Gran Vals” has ever been performed or heard.

Ringtones are the bane of public theater performance. How many concerts and plays, with their stuffy and bourgey audiences, have been stopped for the tiny sine wave bleeping of a cellular ringtone?

The true master musician is the master of her environment, completely at home in her soundscape, she doesn’t so much play the music as get swept up in the score of life.

During a solo performance, the violinist below is interrupted by the ringtone. Without missing a beat, the violinist quickly deciphers the figure, and plays an improvised variation.

This can go much worse, as the recent cellular disturbance at a performance of the New York Philharmonic demonstrates. A pesky iphone marimba played during the end of a Mahler symphony which is apparently enough to get a $1,000 fine and stop the show. It sounds like that was the most memorable moment of the night; the release of tension caused by the hated ringtone, finally allowed people to act naturally—calling for the pariah’s head.

Today, ringtones are an artform all their own (at least, they were 5 years ago), with popular artists such as Timbaland creating specialized albums of ringtones. Even if one of these ‘songs’ is only a few seconds long, it will get infinite more exposure in ringtone form, than in traditional musical form, even if they will be mostly ignored, or despised.

Epiloggies:

Like the ‘arms race of sound’, where popular music albums are becoming louder and louder with each passing year, and consistently louder at each ictus, or the natural analog of this race, where the birds and the bees increase the pitch and frequency of their tunes so they can be heard over the industrial soundscape, the musical pollution of mobile phone ringtones follow a similar trajectory—drowned out by the ambient noise field only to respond with increasing complexity and volume.

The need to be heard is greatest of all friends. And you cannot silence our ringers, not with a thousand fingers. You cannot shush the ten thousands songbirds, and tell them to go sing somewhere else. Listen! They are returning, like a musical cadence, they fly back home on notehead wings, beaks full of nonsense lyrics, syrinxes split into harmony. The season of song is upon us once again. Expect us…

TL&AoSC features this sprightly little number below, “Big Surprise”, about the invention of toys to fill bleak orphan lives with holiday hope. “Big Surprise” is a classic holiday song in every respect, yet is rather obscure. In fact, its season-neutral lyrics make it the perfect Kid’s Song for all time. It is suitable for classrooms year round, as it is for caroling on Christmas morning.

The songs switches key three times—from Bb, up to C, and finally up to D, higher and higher, each verse ascends by a whole tone, while maintaining the traditional song structure of three verses and choruses with a bridge thrown in the middle. Every Christmas song changes key at least once.

The simple animal-child relationship, the gaiety of the melody, and the overall fun quality and aforementioned obscurity make “Big Surprise” the perfect holiday cover carol for Los Doggies. Deck it out.

The very end of the song features the “Jingle Bells” chorus played on the glockenspiel as is tradition. This has probably been a Christmas cliche for a long time. An early famous example that comes to mind is Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song”. Another popular one is in Bruce Springsteen’s cover of “Santa Clause is Coming to Town”. In both examples, the melody is played from the 3rd, as it is in the original “Jingle Bells”. Recently, Jimmy Fallon, Maria Carey, and The Roots continued the tradition in a live toy rendition of Mariah’s song “All I Want For Christmas Is You”.

In a slight twist on this cheesy holiday cliche, Los Doggies transposes the melody up to the 7th, resulting in a Major 7th (Add 9) Chord. Drag over the noteheads below to hear the melody in its original key (A Major), then click on the chord to hear how it works over the D Major (as in the end of “Big Surprise”). Try hitting 64th notes on the glock, by quickly dragging your cursor past the row of C-sharps.

The Major 7th makes the cliche a little sadder. After all, it is the’ Chord of Love’, as they say. A staple jazz chord, the Major 7th appears in many classic jazz carol standards. The Charlie Brown song “Christmas Time is Here” by Vince Guaraldi features a memorable Major 7th Chord that is emphasized by the first note of the melody.

We also performed a version of “Christmas Time is Here” with our good friend Liana Gabel in honor of our mutual kickstarters happening this month.

Here’s the facebook invitation. We hope you can attend. Cancel your holiday plans. Hire a sitter. Or bring your baby to the show. We’ll play the bounciest slaphappy major music that kid has never heard. But seriously, wear some earplugs to protect your ears from earworms.

The choruses and hooks will be catchy as hell, from both bands, and the tinnituses of the audiences will ring true through the night.

Is this belated apocalypse? a crowd-goer wonders. Or just another dark loud smokey night of the soul?

“It is neither, my lonely traveler,” a voice enters him, cutting through the music like a daemonic deejay.

Another fan gets lost in the mosh-pit of her mind; she trips over the beat and causes a train-reaction in the bar. Choo, choochooio—the band can’t keep up. A rim-shot barely conceals the awful irony of the lead singer’s joke.

Suddenly, and out of nowhere, the bouncer cuts the sound, and the bartender picks up an acoustic guitar and starts singing (as if they had planned it all out ahead of time). His voice is a pure saccharine glory hole, laced with operatic colortura, and rock ‘n’ roll bravado bravura. It is the best sound anyone has ever heard. The entire bar goes into a swaying twilight trance. Many are openly weeping like the cry, cry, crybabies they always knew they were deep down inside. An audience wave of tears ripple through the crowd. The bartender plays for a solid three hours. Even the band is spellbound by what’s coming out of the singer-songwriter-bartender’s mouth. Is it air, or electromagnetism, or some Fifth Force that Nature has waited till this New Year to reveal to Us? Spectators would later compare it to “an opium orgy without all the mess”. Or, “Like all of your life’s orgasms experienced at once.”

But few could describe the frission that trickled down their spines—the chills and feels one senses when ∞ was plus 1 and heaven and hell fused—when at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s day, the bouncer unexpectedly stepped up on the bar and joined in on two-part harmony, almost like the two voices could be seen as bodies of air making love above us as the wind makes love to the trees.

Our hearts glowed like hellfire and beat like war drums. They got so bright and so loud, our hearts sank deep into our groins, and hung heavy there with meaningful weight, before slinking slowly up into our heads. Throbbing against our skulls like some terrible head-heart-ache, they casually burst out the top, for they could do no other, and shot out into the night sky like blazing comets before settling into some distant star pattern no one cared to gaze at anyomre.

It was also beautiful, maddening, like much that had happened. The cover was cheap though. And the beers were okay. We made new friends too. You should come.

Fans of tribe-inspired teams sing the War Chant in perfect 4/4 time, set to an “ooga chaka” beat, while tomahawking with their right hands on the downbeats (usually the 1′s and the 3′s) like some crazy syncopated musical cult. They mostly sing in the key of F Pentatonic, prompted by marching band or ballpark organist.

Drag over the individual black noteheads below to listen, or click on the score to play/stop the entire melody.

I like this melody. It backtracks over each part. It has a kind of spiraling unfolding shape, like a snake who eats her own tail and vomits up another snake head. The first 2 wo’s are repeated quickly in the 16th note turn at the beginning of the second measure (the “wo-a-woah”). Then those first 2 measures are combined, to form the essence of the 3rd measure (a perfect 4th interval below). And finally, the 4th measure mirrors the second measure, and resolves to the 1st note of the entire melody (the F an octave below).

Similar to the ‘China melody’, the Indian War Chant captures the spirit of a nation (or the melodic mocking of a minority). The F Minor Pentatonic melody references a I → V → I chord progression. With quick melodic turns of a pentatonic key, and a big brassy timbre or anthemtic chanting, the above melody could easily invoke any exotic place or people, but it is the duple meter—the backing beat of a “HUY-yuh-yuh-yuh” or an oogachaka with extra ooh—that gives it that authentic buffalo tom tom Native Americiany sound.

The Indian Chant originally comes from the Florida State University Seminoles 1960′s cheer “Massacre” played at football games by the Marching Chiefs. “Massacre” features a much funkier version of the melody.

As legend goes², the white man held a sporting contest in 1984 against the Auburn Tigers, where fans enthusiastically sang along with the “Massacre” melody, and continued to drunkenly sing, even as the marching band fell silent. The pitch might not have been perfect, and there’s no way they could hit all those bouncy rhythms in the original melody. So the simplified easy-to-sing version above was born, from a historical piece of audience participation.

The seminal Seminole melody has since spread to other teams and other states around the country, becoming the cliché Indian melody to sing at sporting events and beyond. It fits in well with other Minor Pentatonic sporting event melodies like “Ass-hole”, and “We Will Rock You”. The Minor Pentatonic scale is a natural scale, found in every musical culture, making it ideal to sing with your fellow fans or to mock your rivals with (as in nanny nanny poo poo).

I like sports.

Notes:

[1]

[2] Florida State University athletics website, “The War Chant”

For those who’ve lived and lost, the memories and melodies of home stay with us, like an alpha earworm. If our names are sung (unless you speak a tonal language like Mandarin), the melody will sound sarcastic. For instance, a 2-syllable name that is sung with a rising first tone, and a falling second tone, let’s the person know they are being gently chided for their stupidity. However, there’s nothing but sine-wave sincerity in the forgotten bitones of telephone tonality.

In the age of landline phones, every home in America was denoted by a unique melody. If you got lost, or ran away, you could always echolocate your way back, like a homesick microbat. Now everything is on that fancy GPS, and cellular prerecorded music has eliminated the need for melodic home-association.

But I remember still—the memories and melodies of home. I hear it in my heart,

Go ahead and phone home to your home phone if you got one (or transpose your cell #). The bitonality of the telephone system makes for two melodies playing at the same time. The higher melody in D Major is the easiest to hear, while the lower melody in F Minor is more subconsciously felt (or ignored because of its dissonance).

Homey, homey; homé.

The Critical Stop Sound is now a D Minor 9th Chord—the relative minor of the computer key of F Major. This Chord includes the F maj 7th face-chord inside of it. Click on the noteheads below to listen.

Epilogue:

The American telephone system is in F Major. And now, Windows Eight. It’s like we’re living in Super Mario Brothers Land, except in F Major. There is a conspiracy for harmonic homogeneity in America, to unite us under a single key. Let these fancy jazz chords serve as a warning, just as they were intended.

These ‘psych-out sounds’, or ‘made-ya-listens’, sure make it hard to make it as a musician in this world. Instead of a nice equal temperament tone, like say a B, or say maybe a B-flat, the microwave drones and beeps a quarter tone between them. The same utility frequency can be found in other home appliances. The 60 hz American Power Grid hums at the same frequency.

The low drone will play as long as you like. The fermata symbol, a cyclops eye, indicates the note is held until the conductor let’s go. Click on the unstemmed notehead to play/stop.

The Ready Song is in 4/4, and has a similar vibe to Backup Truck Beeps. For authentic microwaveforms, click the top drone on and off, then quickly drag over the beeps.

Epilogue:
Why are all the machines so mistuned? Is this a B-horror movie musical we live in?
Well, the 60 Hz became popular not because of its musicality, but because of it’s mechanical use in railway rotary converters. It has a very long boring history you see, that only fuddy duddies from other dimensions can appreciate.

Unlike many grunge bands (or any bands really), Nirvana’s unique sound was due to timbre (the sound of screaming vocals and distorted guitars), as much as it was to tonality (the arrangement of the notes into a key). They meddled with tritones on Bleach, discovered new and unusual 4-chord song progressions like “Aneurysm” and “Tourettes”, and tied the whole dissonant package together with their intuitive raw feel and Kurt Cobain’s natural sense of melody.

Let’s look at the verse melody from “Smells like Teen Spirit”. Click on the black stemmed noteheads to listen.

The melody resolves on the 2nd, one degree above the root note. Drag over the F root above to hear how they harmonize. They create an F9 chord like the above right.

“Smells like Teen Spirit” is a simple F Minor 4-Chord Ballad, but the melody is what makes it really interesting. It’s as beautiful to sing, as it is to rock out on a guitar. It’s worth taking a look at the entire verse melody.

Click on the score to play/stop.

The bouncy off-beat melody is an F Natural Minor scale, or the Aeolian mode (F G Ab Bb C Db Eb). Although there is only bass playing the root notes of each chord throughout, the melody beautifully expresses the full range of the Minor scale by hitting all seven notes. Kurt may only play power chords (neutral chords with only perfect fifths and octaves), but the “minorness” of the F and Bb minor chords is expressed in the melody. So too, with the majorness of the Ab and Db major chords.

In the score above, you can plainly see the fearful symmetry of the melody. The first and third measure are a kind of inversion of each other that both resolve on the 3rd (Ab), while the second and fourth measures are basically parallel, transposed down a 4th.

The demo version features a melody that is even more symmetrical. There’s no longer the upwards motion of the first three notes (“Load Up On”) that really makes the melody pop out and present itself. This bluesy revision to the melody actually makes the whole line better by including a little bit of novelty, and less redundancy in the first and second measures. Tiny imperfections and defying expectations make music new and fun.

And sometimes, you’ve got to just let the song sing to you the right melody….

The above harmonies are found ‘accidentally’ during the prechorus of the song. The guitar plays a high alternating C and F, while the vocal melody (hello hello hello how low) hits a a passing G, which results in the unlikely chords above.

Kurt Cobain would often hit wrong chords—suspend fourths when he meant to hit power chords, or major chords when he meant minor—but the dissonant jazz chords above are completely intentional, and while not explicitly played, are heard briefly in the passing minor melody.

Musicians can’t catch a break in this society. Everywhere around them are false B’s. The Grid Tone is a flatted B (60 Hz)—about halfway between a B♮ and a Bb—and feeds back from their very instruments, providing them with a false note to tune to. And now TV tuning is all off too! You’d think the reptilian broadcasters would support a single tuning to unite the human race. We need to start demanding equal temperament for all peoples.

Epilogue:
I remember an interview with Elliot Smith where he talked about watching a lot of TV while playing guitar to write songs, and I imagine it is a fairly common phenomenon for artists to work under distraction. The tube inside a television is said to emit alpha waves (among other things), that entrain your brain, lower your freqs., and put your mind at rest, so that you are an impressionable zombie ready to lap up the oozing TV set slime. Experienced mediators are said to be unhypnotizable. Perhaps, Elliot like many other stay-at-home singer-songwriters entered a meditative trance while zoning out in front of the TV, finger-plucking his guit-fiddle and whatnot, or like Steve Vai who fell asleep while noodling, and dreamed of the best possible music, only to awake to the harsh noise of day. White noisey television snow.

Perhaps, this little phrase is man’s own “proprietorial call”, fashioned after the territorial songs of animals who’ve everything to lose. Drag over the noteheads below, from left to right, to listen to the Car Arm Alarm, or click on the image to view the Car Arm Alarm Waveform.

Each “chwup” begins on a flat B (about halfway between a B and a Bb, like the Grid Hum), and then bends upwards. The first tone doesn’t bend as high, and only reaches around a C, while the second goes to a D. The whole thing sounds like a whole tone interval (C to D) because of how quickly each note bends.

The Car Arm Alarm may have originally been inspired by bird calls, but in turn, it has inspired new bird calls of its own. Lyre birds and mockingbirds are known to imitate the Car Arm Alarm among other man-made sounds. It’s starting to get confusing out here in the jungle, as I often mistake the hum of a street light for a hive of bees, car alarms for the calls of birds, and hallucinate ringtones arpeggiating out from silent buttocks.

Epilogue:
Hmm, maybe it should be Car Alarm Arm? Either way, three times fast is two too many fast.

Real men die as they dream—fabulous.

There are ways around it. You can fade out, nice and gradually, as if passing on in the middle of the night, unconscious of the dying that envelops you. You can fade, and let the attack of life peacefully decay into the black noise of death.

Maybe it doesn’t have to end at all? You can just cross-fade into another incarnation; reborn in endless playlists of birth and death. The friendly voice of the deejay deity will come on the aether and lull you into this or that form. Maybe you could just put yourself on repeat, and forever loop the memories and melodies of your youth.

Songs today rarely need to stand alone anyway. They segue endlessly into the next in a sea of songs, like billions of babies booming each year. There’s plenty of bodies to possess. Let the masses cling to their genres, and live out their plasticine days in easy-listening limbo.

We just wish the good songs never had to end, especially this one, ’cause it’s so good. But the good songs are ending all the time, right when they begin playing, and they wouldn’t even be good without the ending. All sounds return to the silence, as all souls return to the source.

The root of all existence is you, tonic friend and birthnote. Drag over that C4 below and simply observe how all things return to nothing.

The most popular key in pop and pedagogy is the C Major scale. These seven sacred tones relate to the colors of the rainbow. Drag over the C Major Scale below.

The drama of music results from the tension between the tonic and the rest of the key, much like the drama of life results from the interactions between the self and the rest of the world. Musical cadences create the perception that a song has a central tone around which all other tones revolve. Cadences are happening all the time in music, in every measure, everywhere. They are the endless ending of musical phrases, jumping up and falling back onto itself.

There are two main cadences used in popular music. The first is the Plagal cadence, or the “Amen cadence”.

A certain corporate jingle capitalizes on the authentic cadence.

“By Mennen”, the popular 90′s commercial melody, is by far the most insidious jingle ever written. It’s far worse than the NBC chime, which uses the same cadence. They took the most basic phrase of music and set those ridiculous lyrics to it. “♫ Byyyyy ♫ Mennen ♫”

Mennen: It’s not even a palindrome. Some earworms never crawl out of your brain. They can’t be killed as they copy and share themselves when split.

Who knows what Mennen is and what it advertises for? No one remembers. The melody will live on, long after the company it sang for is just a memory.

“By Mennen” harks back to another manly cadence, the memorable “Men – Men – Men” cadence from “Stout Hearted Men”. In the key of F,

Above is the choir version. I don’t know much about endings, but that’s a great way to begin a song.

Epilogue:
Now how will we die sweet friends? Die like a dominant? Will we fade out slowly into the night like “Hey Judey Judey Jude”? Or will we hit and quit it, kick it and kill it, like men.

Real men. Like Rachmaninoff.

Of course, they sometimes cry at the coda.

One little note can kill your career, and break your band up into smithereens.

What a huge difference one little note can make! The difference between heaven and hell lies in a mere semitone. A half-step between public praise and hater’s hate. One hundred cents between consonant triumph and dissonant failure.

One little note can bring on the scorn of a nation. Even in a song that nobody likes—a schmaltzy waltz that is about as embarrassing to sit through as Happy Birthday.

All of the public criticism for “The Star-Spangled Banner” by pop group The Fray at the NCAA championship a couple days ago¹ hangs on one little wrong note, though you won’t hear about it in the news.

There’s no way people hate this version for stylistic reasons. It can’t be because they played it as a schmaltzy waltz. “The Star-Spangled Banner” is a schmaltzy waltz!

It can’t be because they made it a “One Five Four Five” Chord progression; everyone loves those!

It might be because the instrumentation was a tad too “Occupy” for people’s tastes, but it’s actually a pretty conservative folk arrangement, and not at all the main reason for the jingoistic indignation stirred up in the public. Guitars, dudes, a tambourine, and a drum—it’s all pretty damn all-American. This easily could’ve been the version George W. Washington sang at the end of the Civil War.

No, it’s got nothing to do with politics. It’s because of one terrible horrible no good very bad little note, as demonstrated in the two widgets below.

The rhythm guitarist plays the I V IV V chord progression in G.

However, the other guitarist hits a high G# over the C Major Chord, instead of a G. At just a semitone away, the sharpened tonic is one of the most dissonant possible wrong notes they could’ve played.

Try dragging over both guitar parts simultaneously in alternating up and down-strokes. Just drag over the start of each measure, then slowly move on to the next pair to get a taste of the delicious dissonance lurking in the cliché chord progression.

The sad part is that the guitarist plays it right in the intro (with the G), and then botches it for the rest of the song (with the G#). Or maybe they were going for something truly progressive?

The whole mess creates a very silly harmony, an unintentional augmented chord—C Major with an added Minor Six (Ab). It’s a musical joke of sorts, and that’s one thing Los Doggies can get behind.

I can relate though. When you’re on stage, your mind can play tricks on you; mess you up. Take a look on the youtube below. A clear case of musical madness caught on camera.

I know why,

So, occasionally this blog is relevant—like really relevant. Topical too. Like when a new fictional bird is introduced to the public consciousness, and within the fortnight, the relevant bloggy and widgets are up and running.

Below is a short yet striking scene from The Hunger Games (2012). I’m pretty sure it’s the climax of the movie. No spoilers. Click on the youtube to play it.