Los Doggies

Adult Sing-Alongs in Contemporary Film

7 November 2010, 9:28 pm

Dead, dead; dead.

The American sing-along is dead. Once upon a time, there was a baby Steinway in every household, and American families sang together in perfect nuclear harmony. Pa was an operatic baritone, and little Timmy had chosen to forgo puberty to carry on the castrati legacy. The sing-along was the musical hearth of the home, warming our spirits each holiday with all-night medleys fake-booked on the spot.

Sadly, the patriot songs, hymns, and drinking songs that inspired the group sing-alongs of yesteryear will stay in those fake-books, abandoned by a war-wearied atheistic public who still like to drink, but now to the tune of a digital jukebox. Is there anything more terrible than the obligatory Happy Birthday sing-along? Even the National Anthem is a little too sing-songy, to perform in public.

However, embarrassing sing-alongs can still be found in contemporary films—a quaint artifact of our Atlantean musical culture—as if it required a great deal of special effects and movie-magic to get a group of people to sing together.

Below, we have Jerry O’Connell belting out David Cassidy’s “I Think I Love You” from Scream 2. Somehow they even got the key of this song right—E Flat Major. Either O’Connell has perfect pitch, or Wes Craven respects the Partridge.

The really interesting thing about this clip is how beautifully it illustrates the phenomenon of Clapping on the Ones. The audience actually keeps their clap on the same beat the entire time, as if they were cued and synched for this scene. It is Jerry O’Connell who compromises the rhythmic integrity of the sing-along song. Around :20 seconds in, O’Connell is late on his melody, and the audience finds themselves unwittingly clapping on the ones. While the clap begins on the Two’s and Four’s, Jerry misses a beat, and forces the audience to clap on the One’s and Three’s, so that what was once Up-beat, is now Down-beat.

All I’m sayin’ is: Clapping on the One’s would never even be happening like this, if the people would be stomping on the One’s instead. Not that it’s such a bad thing. It’s a wonderful thing really.

The above lunchroom sing-along scene was borrowed from an earlier film—Top Gun—wherein Tom Cruise sings “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” accompanied by a bar full of fellow air jocks singing unison. As in the clip above, these guys are dead-on Db Major—the original key of The Righteous Brothers song. Such respect for the classics!

Of course, people still have serendipitous sing-alongs at sporting events and church. And the children still sing nursery rhymes and play double-dutch. Leave it to the kids to keep the song alive, while us atonal adults fade into the black noise.

Sing-alongs ain’t embarrassing. Talking without tone: now that’s embarrassing. Next time you need to tell someone you love them, try doing it in song, in a public space, with all of your comrades singing along in perfect lunchroom harmony.

Tagged Audience, bad movies, Clapping on the One

3 Comments

iFart computer sounds :) (o)- – –

5 November 2010, 1:04 pm

What are the most popular sounds around us? Are they musical or noisy? Artful or aleatoric? Do you hear more birdsong than pop song? Is the human speech around you monotonal, monotonous, or musical? Do you wear headphones all day, or does your own cortex hallucinate music for you?

Friends, there are no more insidious sounds out there than the perpetual music of our machines. Along with the Grid Hum and corporate earworms, the synthetic sounds of personal computers earn their place in the Industrial-Musical complex. These are the most popular sounds around us – neither words nor lyrics, nor melodies, nor even our own effluvia surround us so much as these perverse atonalities. The computer literacy involved in turning these presets off, combined with the hopeless habituation of users to their presence, makes the following samples some of the most played sounds on Earth ever. Unlike the B-flat hum, which will drone on into the twilight of humanity, we have the choice right now to silence this digital flatulence.

Behold the Mac fart!

This farting sound is actually attached to the volume controls on an Apple computer, so that every time you turn it up or down, it fires off a fizzle of these pathetic robotic imitations of our beautiful body score – that big ass brass, like a Spike Jones concert, perfectly blending comedy and music.

There is an analogous sound on a Window’s machine, the so-called “System Notification” that resembles a lip-pop—another offensive natural sound that emerges from our bodies. Now why would a Gates, or a Jobs, want to make machines that reproduce our flatus for us? The answer lies in the Doomsday Seed Vault.

For all their irksome qualities, these body-based synths are nothing compared to the truly tonal variety, such as the Window’s “Asterisk”. This is another of a million alarms that come ready to rock each PC. Like the Hum of American machines, it is a B tone.

What kind of instrument is that? Does it sound like any instrument you can even name? It’s pure computer tone.

Please, people: Get in your control panels and turn this shit off. I can shut my eyes from the horrors of this world, but I ain’t got no earlids!

Tagged B Tone, Body Sounds!, computers, Hum, Industrial Music

2 Comments

Marching Jam

22 October 2010, 4:04 pm

Hello. We will be having a Marching Band Jam in New Paltz for the Halloween Parade on Sunday October 31. It starts at 6pm on North Manheim Blvd. and marches down Main Street into town. Please join us for this intense musical experience, where we try to play a single song for an hour long. Bring your own instrument, use one of our percussive toys, or play the membranophone of your own body. We also need lots of singers!

We will be performing a classic ’80s hip hop dance groove. It’s got 4 notes and is super easy to play. The scale is know as A Minor Pentatonic.

If you can’t play the low E in the 1st and 3rd measures, just sub in another G to play a 3-note version. The 4th measure has plenty of rest to either drop out or pick up the melody once again. We will also have plenty of drum-based vocal sections where lyrics to various 80’s and 90’s hip hop hits will be sung out and shouted.

Some songs we will sing are:

“Everybody Dance Now” – C+C Music Factory
“Pump Up the Jam” – Technotronic
“Wiggle It” – by 2 in a Room
“Push It” – Salt ‘n’ Pepa
“Can’t Touch This” – MC Hammer
“This Beat is Tecnhotronic” – Technotronic
“It Takes Two” – Rob Base
“Who Let the Dogs Out?” – Baha Men

If you can think of more songs, please write them down in the comments section of this post. Here’s the facebook event page that we had David Fincher make for us.

Hope to see you there!

Tagged Marching Band, Minor Pentatonic

1 Comment

Cock-a-doodle Doo

12 October 2010, 6:42 pm

Since chickens find the same faces attractive as we do, it’s possible we share other aesthetic tastes as well. Take the rooster’s crow for instance:

Such pacing and portamento! Drag over the noteheads below to hear the rooster played on a rhodes.

I hear it in 3/4 time, like the heartbeat. Afterall, cocks are known to waltz. The notes of the rooster’s crow fit neatly into one obscure scale – F Half Whole, also know as F Octatonic for its 8 notes, 1 more degree than the usual Diatonic 7-note Major/Minor scales.

The rooster hits the first four notes. The F is his tonic root which he begins and ends on. The A and Ab flirt with Major to Minor modulation – the picardy. Though the Octatonic scale is almost absent from Pop Music (with a couple of Los exceptions), the Half Whole interval movement is found in the Radiohead song “Just”. Just listen for the ascending lead guitar line in the intro. It actually follows the reverse of the above, rising a Whole Tone and then a Half-tone.

Why do roosters crow? Why do wine glasses sing? Where do Rock ‘n’ Roll babies come from? All of these questions and more will find their answers here at the Los Doggies Musical Literacy Foundation.

And please do be kind to your chicken friends!

Tagged Animal Music, Birds, Half Whole Diminished, Picardy

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Neotropic Wren

27 September 2010, 2:27 pm

Most birds are solo artists, but plain-tailed wrens form bands. Male and female wrens sing choruses together, duetting in call and answer form. Songs are 2 minutes long, as compared to the standard human pop song of 3 minutes, and will last for as long as 40 verses. Take that Leonard Cohen with your measly 14 Hallelujah’s! Same-sex wrens sing melodies in near perfect synchronicity, similar to the “double-tracked vocals” in a recorded pop song. The males will sing together, followed by a female melody.

Listen to the Neotropic Wren Song

A 2005 article describing the wren’s duets goes by the ridiculous title Antiphonal four-part synchronized chorusing in a Neotropical wren. It sounds like something a robot might dream up, but that’s what they actually called it. You’d think with such a crazy musical title, there’d be some noteheads somewhere in their research, but alas, scientists would rather look at sonograms. All of this pain-staking obsession over an animal’s song, and they didn’t even bother to learn how to play it on guitar. No worries professors, Los Doggies transcribed it below.

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The wren’s song is a lot like other birdsong, with its choppy frantic pacing, modulating phrases, and rhythmic surprises. The first two notes form a Major 6 interval, and sound very similar in pitch and feel to the cardinal’s “purdy”. Below, you can hear how the wren sounds with a musical instrument playing along — a veritable “cover.”

Listen to Wren Song with Keyboard Doubling

On the right, is a sonogram of the song. This is how scientists visualize it. The blue lines denote the males, and red lines denote the females. A double-line is the double-tracked vocals of two wrens in synchronicity. In typical scientific fashion, the authors attempt to reduce these beautifully complex duets to sex and violence.

This must be one of the most complex singing performances yet described in a non-human animal…Why then do the members of a group join to produce a complex chorus? The two hypotheses most commonly put forward for duetting are mate guarding and mutual territorial defence (Hall 2004)…The latter is more plausible, particularly as playback leads chorusing birds to gather round the speaker. The close presence of several birds singing in a coordinated fashion is then very obvious to a human observer and could be especially intimidating to intruding wrens.

I wonder how we would fare under such scientific inquiry, were the motives of human artists reduced to “fucking” and “fighting” or any of the other Biological F’s? A famous pop singer who only plays sold-out stadium gigs, could said to be “only in it for the money”, but this says nothing of the enjoyment of performing music. If these birds suffered alone with their songs, starving and friendless, Vincent van Gogh-like, would their musical motives be more admirable?

Wrens aren’t mere Darwinian machines. They sing for the fuck of it. Just like us. At least I think we do. To be sure we might just have to kidnap little Justin Bieber, puncture his brachial vein for blood samples, color-ring his neck for easy gender recognition, and then show up at his house with boom-box held overhead, blaring out his enemy’s music.

Tagged Animal Music, Birds

4 Comments

Latest Picardies and Bug Songs

26 September 2010, 11:52 am

The new Weezer album “Hurley” has a picardy on it – the band’s first and only picardy. If you recall from our last post, a picardy is when music changes key from Minor to Major on the very same root note. A reverse picardy occurs when a song turns from Major to Minor. In a rocking twenty year history of power chords, love-lorn lyrics, and Sensitive Female Chord Progressions, it’s nice to see songsmith Rivers Cuomo finally employ this obscure musical device.

“All My Friends are Insects” by Weezer is in the key of E. It starts off with E Major for the “earthworm” and “butterfly” verses, but then promptly switches to E Minor for the “dragonfly” verse. The subsequent guitar solo keeps rocking the E Minor key in Munsters style, until the song modulates once more back to E Major for the remaining bridge and verse. Thus, it uses a reverse picardy in switching from E Major to E Minor, and then picardies again back to E Major. The structure is: Major-Minor-Major.

Thanks to Weezer for their picardy contribution, and also for correctly using gender-specific pronouns in reference to non-human animals. “It” is sung for the gender-bending earthworm, “She” for the pretty butterfly, and “He” for the colorful powerful dragonfly.

Why are insects friends? For their vital work in service of the ecosystem? Nah, because they fly around, being beautiful, doing what they do.

Tagged Insects, Picardy, weezer

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Picardy Party

24 September 2010, 1:15 pm

A picardy is a minor-major switcheroo. When music is sad, and suddenly turns triumphant, this is the picardy at work. And it is all thanks to one little note – the Third or Mediant.

In the example above, the Mediant is the note in the middle – the Third. In C Minor the mediant E Flat, gets sharpened up to an E for a C Major. C Minor picardies to a C Major and it feels goods. To discover why, we turn to the dreaded Harmonic Series!

Consonances are found in the lower harmonics, while dissonances are found in the higher harmonics. You can see a C Major chord forming early on in the first five harmonics (C G C E G). Thus, every pitched note you hear has an implicit Majorness to it, as per the harmonic series.

A picardy used as a musical device not only makes us happy by switching to Major, but because it changes key on the same degree, has an extra triumphant boost. The tonic C overcomes his sad minor self, sharpening his third to an E, and becomes consonant, major, and awesome.

Aye picardies! Radiohead do it, The Beatles did it, J.S.Bach did it so cheesey, but no one do it like Lionel:

“Hello” Picardy by Lionel Richie
It begins on A Minor with a “Hello”, down to G, then F, then picardies up to an A Major for the “looking for!”

Picardy also has plenty of cheeky potential. Take the example from “Roundabout” by Yes, a Minor classic that resolves in a picardied E Major chord.

Very cheeky. Or is it pretentious?

Here’s a cheeky picardy of Beethoven’s “Für Elise” written on the Casiotone mt-46.

This is a highly cheeky picardy because of all the blue notes – those devilish D sharps. It’s downright bebop now. The phrase is the same as the original until the end where it picardies at the C#, which is usually a C natural, and in the key of A Minor, now picardied to A major. Cheer up there Beethoven!

Less common is the “Reverse Picardy” where a Major song turns Minor. It seems that the Harmonic series pushes human music ever and ever Major.

Here’s a version of Pachelbel’s Canon in D Minor – a reversed picardy of its former self. The usual “I V vi iii IV I IV V” is now minored where major and majored where minor, making it “i v VI III vi i iv v”.

Surely this is both sad and pretentious!

The Pink Floyd song A Pillow of Winds is structured “Major-Minor-Major”. It’s a Picardy Trip!

It’s your turn now at home. Can you help think of notable picardies, Major Minor switcheroo’s, and the like? Just write ’em down in the comments section.

Tagged Harmonic Series, Major/Minor, Picardy