Occasionally, this blog is relevant―like really really relevant. Topical too. Like when a new Radiohead drops, and the hot new beats widget is up within the week! Track 2 off King of Limbs is a syncopated little Mixolydian tune called “Morning Mr Magpie”. Here is a little loop of the first couple measures to give […]
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Blue Jays
The blue jays are back in town, at least here in my feathery nape of this hairy neck of the snowy woods. These birds are triple forte all the way, and down-right rocking too. Their eponymous call is a screamo-inflected “jaay-jaay” in Concert A. They often bend down a whole tone to a G, as […]
Distress Signal Melody
When you hear a high G, does it Stress Out your Shit? The international distress signal melody is a monotonal song in 7/8 time, written in the key of Morse Code, consisting of three quavers, followed by three crotchets, and another three quavers. Normally, the telegrapher is supposed to rest the equivalent note duration in […]
Beep, Beep
Traffic is the biggest brass band on the streets. In between swelling swooshes of many mediums, vehicles of every key sing onomatopoeic songs―car horn honks, backup truck beeps, klaxon awoogas, train choos, and bicycle bell brrngs―all day and all night and all afternoon, fading in and fading out, with timbres thrown back to the Jazz […]
Quiet as a Quetzal at the Conquest
The singing stairs of the pyramid have lost some fidelity over the centuries, as the once smooth plaster finish erodes from each step, but one can still hear the famous echoes reflected back from hand claps, like the chirps of the Resplendent Quetzal, a bird who, according to Mayan legend, represents the plumed serpent Quetzlcoatl. […]
The Song of Speech
There is a musical illusion, in which a spoken sentence is looped, until gradually, a subtle perceptual change occurs in the mind’s ear, and the words turn into tones, and the sentence becomes a melody. The illusion shows that there is no unique physical property of sound that accounts for a voice being perceived as […]
Devils in Love―The Major Seventh Augmented Fourth Chord
Hey there friends. I’m feeling colloquial today, and downright anthropomorphic too. What do you say we leave behind all that non-human music for a while? And take a look at a snippet of some pure absolute holy humane musical holophones―not even sound really, just an idea that sings in your mind’s ear. I’ll use the […]
