Canadian Geese are musically dimorphic[1], meaning goose males and goose females sing different songs, or in this case, different notes. The male goose sings “a-honk” in F, and the female goose sings “a-hink” in G. Between the couple, is the interval of a whole tone. Drag over ‘dem noteheads below.
Try rolling the mouse back and forth between the male and female to hear what a whole tone flock sounds like, a-honking and a-hinking. While the ornithologist might be content with recording goose song (not to mention, tagging and bagging the musicians), maybe even releasing an album: Sounds of the Pond, expecting listeners to hear the ‘Sounds’ as Music (since it’s playing back on a polycarbonate disc after all), the zoomusicologist might find herself, stalking said pond, trolling its shores, with a small field guitar in hand, ready to maintain jam-eostasis with an F9 Chord. Try dropping a few F9-bombs, and then lay a few a-honks and a-hinks on top.
It’s hand jiving time―time to break out your 3-lined white gloves, just like the kind Mickey and Mario wear (the kind Hamburger Helper Helping Hand is). Roll over the three hands below from left to right. Try it slow. Try it fast. Try it backwards. To get a canter rolling, you’ll need to make counterclockwise circles.
This classic hand jive beat consists of a snap on each hand (also called a fillip), followed by a clap using the palm and opisthenar (the front and back of the hand). The snaps are a duplet of 16th notes on the up-beat, and the clap is an 8th note on the down-beat. When carnies and other street performers execute this maneuver, the beat is fast and even, like that of a horse canter.
The Snappy Slap Hand Canter is a staple of hambone, juba, and all manner of habile dance. It even has lyrics set to it, “badda bing badda boom”, a phrase borrowed from Percussionese, making the Hand Canter a kind of song; a song that was once an animal drum beat.
Like whistling, hand jiving helps stave off ennui, sublimate our darkest of Biological F’s, and sounds really good too. Check out this scene from Micmacs to hear how a pro performs the Hand Canter.
Zoomusicologists are just now beginning to understand the enormous influence non-human animal music has had on the development of human animal music. The three traditional aspects of music―melody, harmony, and rhythm―are not uniquely human at all, and were in fact copied from our fellow animal musicians.
Songbirds showed mankind how to whistle melody, in Major and Minor scales, while horses (and other domestic quadrupeds) helped steady the rhythms of the human heart and the instinctual drive to drum, by throwing down a 4/4 beat.
Humans are born to drum, before they could even talk, they slapped the membranophones of their own bodies, as a form of communication, just like other primates. Gorillas punch paradiddles into their chests. Chimpanzees drum on tree trunks. Rhesus macaque monkeys are known to bang rhythmically on their cages. Why even rats like to tap out little paw beats on the ground.
All of the various drums of a modern day rock kit are just lying around the Earth, waiting to be picked up and played. Walk into any forest, pick up a pair of sticks, and head over to a log drum and start hitting. Try scraping some rocks together. Stir that rhythmic salad with small circular steps in the dirt, just like brushes on a snare drum. Need some cymbals? Just go find a small body of water and splash those crashes. Wait for a good storm, and we be jammin’ with the Gods.
4/4 Legs good, 2/4 Legs good too
But where in all of the chaotic rumblings of the sky and sea, did a steady beat finally emerge? The birds would be no help with establishing time and tempo, as their songs were spurtive and free, with much of the music found in the rests; between the notes. Insect musicians might have inspired some, as many stridulators like crickets, chirp in an even pulsing beat, but in a field, or a forest, where the insect choruses thicken, their beats smear into a single rhythmless drone.
Early man would hear her own heart, shuffling time along slowly at a Larghetto tempo, establishing down-beat and up-beat with a “lub, dub” iambic pattern. Her own ambulation would establish a basic cut-time marching beat feel, but human feet are soft and can barely compete with the cloven rim shots of quadrupeds. Plus, humans are bipedal and walk in a 2/2 time signature.
The horse and her four gaits, clopping passed at a steady 4/4 time on four legs, walking Andante and galloping Allegro, originated the schizophonic delusion that a divine drumming presence pounded forth from all things, the animals themselves, and the Earth itself, in a 4-beat measure.
Hipporhythmics
Today we’re going to learn all about Hipporhythmics, a branch of Eurythmy. ‘Hippo’, as in horse, not hippopotamus. We will see how the four legs of a moving quadruped create distinct rhythmic patterns and tempos. Then we’ll transcribe their gaits into human drum beats, playable with four limbs on a modern day rock drum kit. In other words, we’ll try to play drums like a horse. Just turn your speakers to a comfortable volume, and click on the black noteheads.
The first horse beat is known as the Walk. At slower tempos, the Walk sounds like a shuffle, and at faster tempos, the Walk sounds like a straight and even roll of 16th notes.
The horse walks by stepping on her hind leg, followed on the same side by the front leg, and then repeated on the opposite side (Right Hind, Right Front, Left Hind, Left Front). The front legs provide the down beats, while the hind legs provide up-beats. This shuffle beat is exactly like the swung tattoo of our hearts. Clock time, at 60 beats per minute, matches the tempo of our hearts, as well as that of a slow ambling horse.
The Trot is a little more up-tempo than the Walk, and fits into a 2/4 time signature like our own two-legged gait. However, because of the fast tempo, the feel is straight (like a fast walk) and not swung like the Walk Shuffle.
The horse trots in diagonal leg pairs, stepping on her hind leg and the opposite front leg at the same time, followed by the other hind leg and the opposite front leg (Right Hind + Left Front, Left Hind + Right Front). The trot, at 90 to 120 bpm, is the cut-time of human heart beats and clock beats.
The Canter is distinguishable from the 4-beat Walk, and the 2-beat Trot, by virtue of its 3 beats. The time signature can still be anything―4/4, 2/4, or 1/1―but the feel is straight. The down-beat is preceded by two 16th notes, sounding like the classic “William Tell Overture”. In poetry, this metrical foot of two short syllables, followed by a long syllable, is called an ‘anapest’.
In the Canter, the horse steps down on a hind leg, followed by the other hind leg and the opposite front leg at the same time, and finally accented with the other front leg (Right Hind, Left Hind + Right Front, Left Front).
The last horse gait is the up-tempo Gallop. The Gallop is a steady triplet pattern with a rest in between. As the horse moves faster and the tempo increases, the rest in between triplets also increases in duration. This horse beat is of particular importance to the development of human drumming, as it showcases how lickety-quick tempos can be broken up into a swing or shuffle feel―with blazing 3-legged triplets on the up-beats, leading into a swift 1-legged down beat. It is similar to the classic katydid triplet.
The horse gallops just like the canter, except the second beat is split into two. Leading with the Right Hind, she steps down on the Left Hind, followed by the Right Front, and ending on the Left Front.
So there you have it―the four horse beats of the apocalypse. The Walk inspired 4/4 time signatures, while the Trot revealed cut-time and straight feel. The Canter, increased the tempo further, and cemented the steady even 16th note feel, with strong representative up and down-beats. The Gallop, took the shuffling heart beat, and shredded it over fast tempos, straight feels, and 4/4 times.
How to Play Drums like a Horse
If you are non-local and can’t take our weekly Hipporhythmics class at the VFW, then feel free to take advantage of our free instructional home widget below. Just take your feet and your hands and use them to stomp the floor and slap your hams respectively. Using Hipporhythmics, we can absorb the horse’s power, almost as if we were eating the horses themselves! Children taught Hipporhythmics at an early age (like really early [intrauterine even]), can hambone twice as fast as the other kids, and a million times faster than your grandpa―Juba the Kid.
That Gallop Beat is particularly nasty, syncopated amongst the 4 limbs. Try running that for a mile at 130 beats per minute. If you can, you’re faster than a horse! And better at drums too!
Music Definition
John Cage called it the ‘art of noise’, but then his most famous song is four and half minutes of silence. The “noise” part seems a little too much like a Duchamp toilet Fountain, and the “art” part is a little too je ne sais fart.
Actually, Music is a wide spread phenomenon in several living species apart from man, which calls into question any definition of music, and more widely that of man and her culture, as well as the idea we have of the animal herself.
So, we’ll just call it some kind of emotional sound, for now. Emo-sound. Yeah; that’s good.
Afterall, music doesn’t even have to be conscious. Take a line from DJ Drowsy Dream: “I make music in ma’ sleep / Spittin’ Z’s and snorin’ leafs”.
Or as Debussy said, “Music is what happens in between the hooves.”
Hello, Goodbye
I hope you enjoyed this bout with pseudoscience and musical hallucination. If you’d like to see Hipporhythmics taught in public schools, please donate to the Los Doggies Musical Literacy Foundation. Thank you.
Mozart wrote a song called Leck mich im Arsch or ‘Lick me in the asshole’, a minute long song for six male voices―castrati preferred. He also loved ‘farted on‘ jokes. The oldest recorded joke from Sumeria is of this style.
Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.
Even Stravinsky, who is as dry as can be in his Poetics of Music, and dull to a T in his autobiography (as if he never farted on anybody), can’t resist making musical funnies. The classic Augurs chord from The Rite of Spring showcases Stravinsky’s unwitting wit. It is a dissonant double-chord, consisting of an E Major with an Eb Dominant Seventh chord on top. Easy to play on piano, it takes 2 or 3 guitarists to get.
Augurs of Spring
Hilarious right? Mmm, quite.
This section of The Rite paraodies a basic I → IV chord progression, the classic progression of folk music. The first Augurs chord, a muddy E Major tonic, is accented in odd-time off-beat patterns by a second chord, a dissonant subdominant A Major. Over each chord hangs a displaced Eb Dominant 7th.
This is how someone with a completely abstract sense of humor makes a joke. He takes the chord progression you know and love and takes an E-flat Dominant shit on top of it. This little passage caused riots in 1913 when it premiered in Paris. The audience laughed and booed, and eventually erupted into fist-fights.
Spike Jones was inspired to pursue musical comedy after witnessing Stravinsky’s performance of The Firebird, where the conductor’s shoes, squished in time with his music. Frank Zappa―the sex magick love child of Spike Jones and Stravinsky―loved to quote from The Rite of Spring, for joke.
Later, the Augurs Chord predicted the birth of prog-rock, math-rock, fusion, and stoner what have you.
Maybe he’s just rolling because graves are so damn uncomfortable, or maybe Stravinsky actually finally gets his own joke. Or maybe the Devil hath farted on and on.
Phones are in F. They ring F’s, they drone dial tones in F Major Thirds, and the buttons beep in F Minor. Many other related phone melodies are also in F Major, such as the classic “Disconnected”. This little melody is a Bb Major Seventh, the fourth degree of an F Major scale. Click on the noteheads (watch your volumes!).
An arpeggio is a chord played horizontal, like a melody. The Bb Major Seventh was deliberately chosen to denote “Disconnected” by the powers that be, in order to create a basic I → IV chord progression. While still in the key of F Major, the Bb Major Seventh asserts its own tonality. Most music in the world, throughout all time, consists of this basic chord progression―an endless game of musical chairs between the One and the Four (or in this case, between the “Dial Tone” and “Disconnected”).
The “Dial tone” is an F Major Third (F and A), and acts as the root (the One) of telephone teletonality.
F Major is pretty. In synesthesia, it is a light blue face, like the face of the moon without all that night attached. The other notes of the scale provide the skin tones, G and A blemishes and blushes, a soft pink C flush, and green D pupils in the white E’s of its eyes. The B-flat is like shaggy brown hair on the blue F major FACE.
Here is a short song “Disconnected” by Los Doggies in the key of B-flat lydian as per the telephone. It features Rhodes, guitars, glockenspiels, Casio Sk-1, and the operator.
Once in an eternity, a mogwai comes along with a voice of silver and a heart of gold. Most of his kind are shady Chinese spirits, who suffer midnightly cravings, and a bad case of aquaphilia. They certainly can’t whistle Dixie and play little keyboards in key. Fully acculturated, Gizmo sings a C# Major folk melody in a seemingly I → IV chord progression.
But like the secret trickster he is, Gizmo withholds the tonic C# from his song, yet it is implied in the tonality. If Billy Peltzer was a better musician (or worse), he might have played these chords (with a capo of course), in a kind of interspecies jam. Try it out on the widgets above and below.
Here is a short clip where Gizmo teaches Billy his song.
It seems Billy wants to make Gizmo’s song Lydian here. Instead of an F#, he mistakenly hits a G. That’s ok, mogwai have perfect pitch.
Upon metamorphosis, they lose all sense of music and morals. In the clip below, they can barely sing their own Rag as they terrorize the elderly Mrs. Deagle.
Everyone knows reptiles can’t sing! Only mammals can sing baby!
The Lydian Scale is a lovely scale indeed, reserved for pre-choruses, or to evoke the silly sounds of a circus, and often employed by hollywood composers for alien song, because we all know the universe has been socialized with music, as per Close Encounters and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Let’s take a look and a listen at this scale, to see why it’s so suited for carnival, cosmos, and the feeling of languishing a lone in love.
The Lydian scale is like a Major Scale with a Sharped Fourth. To make C Major into C Lydian, we simply sharpen the F to an F#. Like so:
If you drag over the G enough, you will notice that the C Lydian Scale is actually a G Major Scale in disguise. Moving the Root note of a major scale will produce different scales known as The Seven Sacred Modes, named after ancient Greek tribes. Thus, the Fourth Mode of G Major (the Ionian Mode) is C Lydian.
If a song resolves on G Ionian, its tonality might suggest the C Lydian Scale, but ultimately the G will win out, and be declared king of the key. After all, both are strong sturdy Major Scales, with only a single tone difference.
It is difficult to really hold down Lydian and not let it spill over into its relative Major Key. To achieve this end, we must imply the C Root often enough, and make use of altered chords that are specific to the Lydian Scale. One such chord is called the Lydian Chord. It’s basically a C Major chord with a B Minor chord on top.
If you click on the Play button, it will suspend the chord forever, a pedal point for eternity. This is one easy way to make sure Lydian stays Lydian. If you scroll back up, and take a little solo on the C Lydian Scale, you will hear how even excessive G Major noodling will ultimately resolve back to the C Root.
Suspension is one way to pull off a stable Lydian environment, but composers often rely on the classic Lydian progression, a simple I to II, doh to ray.
Most Lydian Pop Music will make use of this Chord Progression to capture the Lydian spirit. Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” and Jane’s Addiction’s “Jane Says” are two such examples from recent history. (See the Lydian Songs Listing at the bottom of this article.) By withholding the natural resolve of these chords to G Major, an unconscious longing is created in the listener, much like the feeling of unrequited love.
But to really represent Lydian tonality, we must make good use of altered chords. If we stack the chords of a Lydian Scale in Third intervals, we will be left with the familiar Major Minor chords. If we instead stack the chords in intervals of a Fourth, we can evoke the eerie cosmic sound of Lydian tonality.
All of the extra dissonance actually strengthens the ambiguity of this scale and gives more weight to the C Root. There’s no chance of that pesky G usurping the tonality here.
Without any harmonic context, the Lydian key can still be expressed within the notes of a melody. Take for instance, “The Simpsons Theme” by Danny Elfman. Lydian is often used in Elfman’s music to evoke the playful Burtonesque carnival it is scored to.
Heavy use of the Lydian Sharp 4th―the “fah of fah”―makes the tonality of the above melody apparent. It is clearly C Lydian and not G Ionian, further accentuated by the inclusion of the dominant 7th (the B-flat) at the end of the melody. This shows off the silly side of Lydian. To learn more about the dark mystical side of Lydian, read Devils in Love―The Major Seventh Augmented Fourth Chord.
Do you know any good Lydian songs? Just let us know in the comments!
Los Doggies Lydian: Tackleberry (Classic Lydian Chord Progression of D Major to E Major is beefed up with Add Nines) Onebody (Opening verses feature the A Lydian Chord) At Moonrise (A to B)
The Snappy Slap Hand Canter is a staple of hambone, juba, and all manner of habile dance. It even has lyrics set to it, “badda bing badda boom”, a phrase borrowed from Percussionese, making the Hand Canter a kind of song; a song that was once an animal drum beat. 
Zoomusicologists are just now beginning to understand the enormous influence non-human animal music has had on the development of human animal music. The three traditional aspects of music―melody, harmony, and rhythm―are not uniquely human at all, and were in fact copied from our fellow animal musicians.
Once in an eternity, a mogwai comes along with a voice of silver and a heart of gold. Most of his kind are shady Chinese spirits, who suffer midnightly cravings, and a bad case of aquaphilia. They certainly can’t whistle Dixie and play little keyboards in key. Fully acculturated, Gizmo sings a C# Major folk melody in a seemingly I → IV chord progression.
The Lydian Scale is a lovely scale indeed, reserved for pre-choruses, or to evoke the silly sounds of a circus, and often employed by hollywood composers for alien song, because we all know the universe has been socialized with music, as per Close Encounters and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Let’s take a look and a listen at this scale, to see why it’s so suited for carnival, cosmos, and the feeling of languishing a lone in love.
