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iPhone Alarm

7 January 2023, 4:31 pm

Modern life is full of obnoxious sounds—ambient noise, schizophonia, and industrial music—but there is one sound so nasty that it cuts through all of them, which is kind of the point. Of course, we’re talking about the iPhone’s default alarm sound, known as “Radar.”

Did somebody drop a penny down the drain? Did the world’s best triangle player quickly seal themself into a closet? Is there an evil dentist nearby using a tiny drill on a mouse? No, it’s just an Apple fanboy too lazy to change the default settings.

Click upon the score and despair.

The most annoying sound in the world

The alarm sound is a series of 32nd note triplets in decrescendo. The F#6 is high enough that it will wake the neighbors. And the 5/4 time signature is awkward enough that you can’t return to a rhythmic snooze. The lynx-eared among us will hear this sound and instantly want to kill it. I think they call it “Radar” because it’s supposed to be like sonar.

Sonar pings are among the least annoying sounds in the world. They are so pleasant that many a sonarmen and sonarwomen have fallen asleep at their screens. That’s how the Great War was started.

Now that’s the kind of sound you want to sample into a phat beat.

The Apple logo is the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge with a bite taken out. The first Macintosh computer sold for $666.66. But that’s not because Satanists are running all the world’s corporations. The elite just do that stuff for funsies, okay? They’re just trollin’, baby!

Somehow the ad wizards at Apple convinced multiple generations to buy their overpriced crap in order to be hip. Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, created this slick style of self-branding through the art of public relations, but even he couldn’t envision the power of a Justin Long commercial.

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TikTok Outro Sound

2 January 2023, 2:35 pm
The dancing pandemic nurses of TikTok

TikTok is the latest spyware that all the kids are cuckoo for. You can see every kind of degeneracy on it, from prepubescents twerking in dishabille to fully-grown adults twerking in scrubs, although it’s still not as bad as YouTube with its vibrant monkey-torture community.

Every platform is pretty uniform these days; they’re all TikTok. Once the endless feed became the standard, it was game over for humanity. In my day, television used to turn into static and white noise at night, or at least infomercials and home shopping. There was an end to media. Now media is infinite and quickly taking over the natural world.

TikTok gets a lot of flak because it’s Chinese-owned, but that’s so racist, man. Nobody seems to have a problem with the FBI running Twitter, the CIA running Facebook, etc. I don’t recall the Chinese ever running a mind control program on the American public or assassinating a president. Still, I hope it gets banned one day because it is a bane of society.

The true source of TikTok’s power lies in its use of the lovely little major seventh chord. In our last post, we learned that Amazon uses a major seventh for their bumper.

The TikTok outro sound appears on saved videos. It sounds similar to what Windows did with their sound scheme when they softened all of their timbres years ago. It’s just begging to be sampled and placed in a phat beat.

First there is a deep bass around an F1 that bends downward (so deep it’s almost a kick drum), followed by an up-strummed E major seventh. The dissonance between the low F and the Emaj7 cannot be overstated. Why wouldn’t they just use a low E instead? I don’t know; I’m not Chinese.

These insidious sounds are probably heard billions of times a day. Westminster Quarters simply cannot compete. I believe they are nefarious. Anything played that much can’t be good. I like all the songs the CIA uses to torture people with, but not after the billionth time in a row. Yet like most people, when I discover a new song, I’ll listen to it over and over like crimson and clover. Perhaps all music is a subtle form of torture.

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Amazon Chime

29 December 2022, 1:36 pm

Not even his final form

Everyone’s favorite megacorp (but nobody’s favorite network), Amazon, uses a throwback chime for their original productions. NBC used real chimes back in the day, but now it’s all digitally created by some EDM nerd on a DAW, or maybe by the Almighty AI Itself.

As far as chimes go, the Amazon chimes are top-tier. It’s the kind of thing that could go on a church. I’m a bit biased towards the major seventh chord. I must admit I became obsessed with them for a while after my rebellious diminished seventh phase. The first bloggy I ever wrote was on the so-called “Chord of Love.” Jazz musicians wrote so many major sevenths they started to abbreviate them as  “Δ7,” and eventually just  “Δ.”

Click on the video below to be reminded of all the forgettable shows you’ve binge-watched for the last few years.

Major sevenths are the best

A light G major seventh stirs the pot in the background as the high 7th begins the phrase. Down we go (like the chillest doorbell) to the 3rd, up to the 5th (because where else are you gonna go?), and resolving on another 3rd an octave higher. It almost primes you for something good. Maybe if it appeared post-credits, you’d be convinced you had watched something good. But alas, it’s all cliché agitprop made by people who hate you.

Let’s compare it to the mother of all corporate chimes from NBC, whose spirit animal is a peacock—a pretentious animal that only glamps as wild.

A major chord spread out in the universally pleasing key of C.

The NBC chimes were obviously copied from the infamous bell song, “Westminster Quarters,” because we don’t hear that enough times a day already. Perhaps the ad wizards were trying to evoke that cozy feeling you get when waking up early on your day off and heading over to church.

The real NBC chimes

Without even a commercial jingle (or making any profit for a decade), the humble online bookseller attained monopoly on all goods, hearts, and minds. Luckily, my boys at Ball in the House got you covered. I’d make some joke about grown men singing made-up corporate jingles, but honestly, I’m actually super jealous. I wish I had bros like this to sing with. I’ll never reach my full potential as a musical nuisance without a middle-aged a cappella group.

Newfriends can’t major seventh.

Δ
Δ Δ

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Bike Bell

12 December 2022, 12:57 pm
Beyond Burger Bike Bell

There is no more insufferable group of people than cyclists, even more despised than the vegans. Music theorists are a close third in the insufferability Olympics, which is held in Portland each day. My small town wishes they could compete.

One man can only be so insufferable, so I don’t consider myself a cyclist per se, but I do ride a bike all the time. I’m a bike-rider. I don’t wear shiny spandex, so I can’t be a cyclist. I wear plainclothes when I ride, although I do think this gives drivers an extra incentive to want to kill me, as though I don’t take myself seriously enough to wear shiny clothes. I understand the urge to kill cyclists, but I try to suppress this while I’m driving by listening to Ravel’s “Bolero” on repeat in the car.

Anyway I just got this new bell. It was either the hamburger or a very large doorbell, and I chose hamburger.

This bike bell is a trill of C7’s. There must be some kind of trill device inside. I don’t know; I don’t do my own research. Like the ancient Greeks, I just think about an idea, like say atoms or the shape of the Earth, and then set out to prove it post hoc ergo propter heliproctor et tu gamble. That’s Latin for “I read Wikipedia pages.” I’m not about to cut open my bike bell just to see how it works, because then I would’ve destroyed the thing I love. Nuclear physicists and vivisectors take note.

It’s good that my bike is in the universally pleasing key of C. Otherwise, pedestrians would be even more irked by my passing. Can you imagine if my bike was in the universally displeasing key of F#?

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Atonal Bald Eagle Whistling

7 December 2022, 2:29 pm

In this Reddit video, a man whistles atonally to summon an American Bald Eagle for breakfast. Click on the video below to listen.

Don’t be mad at my accidentals, you nerd. It’s atonal!

I can only whistle atonally myself. It took me forever to learn how to blow a note. It wasn’t until my friend suggested I use my actual fingers to shape my cheeks into the proper formation that I learned the ancient art. Within a week, I was whistling Dixie. I can now wolf-whistle at the ladies.

This video was posted to the “Absolute Units” subreddit, although it could’ve easily been on the “Nature is Fucking Lit” subreddit. This is how zoomers talk. Everything is litty, no cap.

Reddit used to be a libertarian paradise for nerds, but it’s long since morphed into something truly evil after the mysterious death of its founder. I still feel compelled to visit every day, just like I do Yahoo, and a handful of other sites I hate. I tell myself it’s to keep tabs on the enemy’s propaganda, but it’s really just an obsessive compulsion at this point. The internet is dead. Society has checked out. We’re all just waiting for the AI to take over and be worshipped as a God.

Even on the above post, the user sees it fit to propagandize the usual crap you can get from any Blackrock-funded corporation. He isn’t necessarily a professional astroturfer. Everyone is an unpaid shill these days. Although he might be paid, or a bot. Remember when Reddit revealed that Eglin Air Force Base was their most Reddit-addicted city? How about Gallowboob outed as a professional marketer? Or Operation Mockingbird? All the world’s a psyop.

I just came to chew bubblegum…and I’m all out of bubblegum.

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Christmastime

6 December 2022, 11:48 pm

It’s that time once again. Break out the Los Doggies Christmas Songbook. Be sure to add our OG Christmas songs to your yuletide playlist. And be sure to drink your Ovaltine.

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PICO-8 Music

14 November 2022, 12:20 pm

Born in the golden age of ’80s gaming, it was always my dream to become a real-life video-game composer. Now nearly one hundred years later, I’ve made that dream a reality with the help of PICO-8.

PICO-8 is a virtual console and game-making machine. The music editor looks like pic below. Instead of being read left-to-right like on manuscript paper, the music here is read vertically like Chinese or the Matrix. Does music move from side to side like a car, or does it cascade endlessly like rain? How does the trajectory of the musical engine dictate the character of the composition?

The PICO-8 is a very appetizing music-making machine. You can see two bars in a single snapshot with four instruments total, perfect to practice your four-part voice leading or minimalist acid-chip loops. The black background is preferred over white manuscript paper—musical notes hover over a black void of silence.

Just like real consoles, PICO-8 plays a boot-up melody when you open the app. The melody is a quick triplet of 3 tones—C, G, and F. Two intervals of fourths that move upwards. V to the I. A perfect cadence. Generally speaking, music wants to move up a fourth, like a chicken up a wire.

Compare this to the classic Game Boy boot-up sound. When you power on this fat grey brick with the spinach green screen, you’re treated to a flammy octave of C’s like a convenience store ding. Or in this case, a convenience store “blong.”

Music is infinite, so it’s nice to have some restrictions. The player will probably have to listen to your song a million times to complete the level. Sometimes the memory of the cartridge will only allow 16 bars per song. Game composition is all about writing the perfect short loop of music that won’t be too annoying.

Game designer Sourencho described what was needed:

Side note: I was thinking more about the music and I realized that for it to be “background”-y the changes that happen should feel like embellishments or variations on the base rather than “development” of the melody. That way it will feel like the music is changing but it’s not taking you somewhere higher or lower, or more important or climactic. Like if you stand in a forest the sounds are always changing because the wind hits different or a bird will start singing but the state of the forest isn’t changing dramatically as if a storm came through or a fire started. Static but with variation.

Beautifully stated. Better than I could do. I took it to mean an excessive amount of major seventh chords and constant modulations.

Anyway, here are a couple games I made music for.

Mimic – a puzzle game

Beamrider – a classic shooter remake

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