In our last post, we covered the Duolingo “Sound of Success,” a happy Major Third inspired by door bells, store chimes, dial tones and car horns, which were in turn inspired by Big Ben’s bell song “Westminster Quarters.”
Now we turn our aural gaze to a more dissonant, evil sound—The Sound of Failure. If the Success Sound is designed to make you feel good by moving upwards in a happy interval, the Fail Sound is designed to open up the pit in your stomach and allow more room for sorrows and woes to swim inside your body and fill the emptiness that is you.
This interval from F# to C is known as a “Tritone,” a diminished Fifth or augmented Fourth. It takes the perfection of holy natural intervals and defiles them. The Tritone is the Devil himself appearing in music, or so they believed in the Dark Ages (back when you could openly beat a hunchback in the middle of the town square and nobody bat an eyelash.) Some middle-aged prudes in the Middle Ages (13-year-olds) even tried to ban the Tritone interval. It’s just that evil! And no Tritone is more evil than a Tritone in F-Sharp. It’s downright nasty.
If the Devil was Minister of Music in Heaven, got fired and fell down to Earth, it should follow that the Devil runs the terrestrial music biz as well. Take one look at the occult-laden sacred prostitutes of pop for proof.
Scientific experiments with babies show that babies prefer Major Chords to Diminished Chords. That’s because babies are winners, and devils are total fucking losers.
For pedagogical reinforcement, the Major Third Success Sound and the Tritone Fail Sound were finely selected by the Duotrope Sound Design team. Unfortunately, all of these sounds are really fucking annoying. Instead of “Westminster Quarters,” we have “Westminster Every 5 Seconds.”
