“Buddha Thompson” is a song made from musical cryptograms—words spelled with notes. Composers like Bach (Bb A C H) and Brahms (Bb A B Eb [B, r, A, H, m, Es]) spell out their own names in their work. Bach’s name works out perfectly, like sonar baby, but Brahms is a little bit of a […]
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Chickadee (New Wave)
The Black-capped Chickadee sings these noteheads three—B, A, and E. When he says “fee bee”, he sings a B to an A, and the chorus of his namesake falls on an E. Drag over the notes below. We wanted to cover this guy’s song, but didn’t know where the royalties should go. Is the chickadee […]
How do you solve a problem like Major/Minor?
Now we’re getting into some deep cuts off e’rebody. Long Island Prime Cuts. The B-sides and the skippers. But how do you skip a song like Maria’s? The eighth cut off the new album is “Major Minor Minor Major”—a shape-shifting song that announces the chord degrees of the E Major Scale, and features solfege from […]
Black Out!
Side-B of e’rebody starts with the punk-wop industrial song “Black Out!”—a song constructed from American choruses and the rhythms of the railroad, describing a post-collapse world where “rolling blackouts” are “rolling home” and the reactionary power-down militia has no recourse but to “get an acoustic.” A rolling blackout is an intentional blackout, a partial shutdown […]
Wesminster Quarters
The clock tower bell song that peals from the belfry 12 times a day is called “Westminster Quarters” and was composed by William Crotch in 1793. It was first heard on Big Ben—the great bell in London—but now every clock tower wants to be like Big Ben, because he the Best Ben. In the old […]
