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Wood Thrush Song

25 June 2021, 11:29 am

wood-thrush-cornell

While wandering around the woods recently, I came upon a mutation of thrushes. That’s what a group of thrushes is called: a mutation. Ancient scientists believed thrushes mutated on their 10th birthday, growing new legs or something, which is strange because they only live 9 years. Scientists used to be so stupid, not the infallible gods they are today.

Thrush song is one of the most beautiful in the forest, and they have a lot to compete with: fairy choruses, the piping of wood nymphs, other avian songsters, and not to mention, transcendentalist poets in fits of whimsy and madness. According to Wikipedia, there are 3 parts to a typical thrush song, but I’ve identified 4 parts, and The Music of Wild Birds has 5.

The great F. Schuyler Mathews describes thrush song thusly:

The Wood Thrush’s music steals upon the senses like the opening notes of the great Fifth Symphony of Beethoven: it fills one’s heart with the solemn beauty of simple melody rendered by an inimitable voice. Certainly one of the most gifted of the woodland singers, the Wood Thrush’s notes are usually in clusters of three, and these are of equal value. No violin, no piano, no organ confined to such a limited score can appeal to one so strongly.

Thrush song is reminiscent of a Pentatonic scale. The thrush below sings in Bb Minor Pentatonic with some odd notes here and there. The entire songs fits nicely into Bb Dorian scale. Concert ready.



There are also lyrics to his song.

Come to me,
I am here,
Sweetest singer,
Warbling cheerily,
Tra-la-la-la-la-la-z-z-z!


Thrushes can learn 50 or so variations of this tune, but the 2nd phrase, “ee-oh-lay” is similar in all birds. The above notation was taken from the following video. The song starts at 0:17.


It’s no coincidence that thrushes sing in a near-human scale. All musical scales are based on the overtone series. When you pluck a single string on a guitar, a number of inaudible tones will also sound which color the audible tone. This is called “timbre” or “tone color” and distinguishes the same tone when played on different instruments. The dominant overtones found at the beginning of the overtone scale make up a Major chord.



There is a natural basis to music whether of the human or animal variety. Next time you hear a bird lick that sounds like some pop cliché, it’s no coincidence! All musicians are drawing from the same overtone scale that lies at the heart of sound.

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A Tetris

5 May 2021, 5:13 pm

tetris_-_1988_-_atari.si



In the late ’80s, the Soviet mind game Tetris invaded American shores. I was busy ducking under a desk for weekly air-raid drills in the basement of my elementary school. You see in those days, it was the right-wing conservatives who were hyping the Soviet threat. Now everything’s flip-flopped and it’s the libs who see Russian bots everywhere, possibly even this blog.

Though there were earlier computer versions, Tetris found its home on the new handheld Nintendo Game Boy. I used to be called a nerd and other non-PC terms for carrying this giant grey brick around in public that was the size of an ’80s cellphone. Now it’s my boomer parents who can’t get enough of their smartphones, while I sit and stare into space. Apparently, even the Earth’s poles will flip-flop some day.

When you get a tetris in Tetris, you’re treated to an SFX that is distinctly Russian in tone. It’s the type of sound that really shouldn’t be notated, but I went ahead and did it anyway. Score should be an octave higher, but it’s easier to see this way.



It begins with a couple of bell-like tones, grace notes of high C’s and quavers of G’s, followed by a sawtooth bending up and then down. An extremely satisfying SFX that sounds like rubbish being cleared, like some Brutalist building being knocked over. A tenuous connection is being made here between the game of tetrominoes, the blocky architecture of the Soviets, and the eventual fall of their empire.

A couple years after Tetris came out, the Soviet Union would collapse with the help of Western institutions and Russian oligarchs. The Russian state head with the state-shaped birthmark on his head appeared in Pizza Hut commercials. Nintendo the yakuza-front successfully litigated their way to the top of the videogame empire. Most everyone forgot about Russia, until an old dusty scapegoat was needed.

Speaking of goats, the other popular SFX from Tetris is the game-over sound, which sounds just like a goat bleating in Bb. It is a harsh and mocking tone that probably qualifies as a jump-scare. Click below to be reminded of your past failures.


Tetris Game-Over Sound



As the popular adage goes, “If Tetris has taught me anything, it’s that errors pile up and accomplishments disappear.”

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Game Boy

4 May 2021, 10:24 am

gb start

Birds and videogames. That’s what we’re all about these days. I don’t play videogames anymore, and birds are kinda annoying, but I still like them both for some reason.

With all of the Nintendo shilling on this blog, the humble grey E-brick known as Game Boy has never been mentioned once, and that’s got to change now. Let’s start at the beginning with the start screen.

When you flick the switch on the spinach green screen, the Nintendo title slowly cascades, foreshadowing the infamous “Tetris effect” you’ll eventually succumb to, where you see floating shapes even with your eyes closed. There is a ding, like that of a convenience store. But this is no single ding, or even a ding dong. It’s a kind of double ding. A blong or a bling.




An octave of C’s from C6 to C7 greets the player on start up. The genius sound-designers at Nintendo decided to place a grace note in front, almost insignificant, but you feel it’s there. I just love grace notes, especially appoggiaturas. They’re the poor man’s pitch bend. Imagine this sound was a single ding. How pedestrian that’d be! Like walking into a deli.

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The G6 Conspiracy

8 April 2021, 2:40 pm
corona cult

As the government spends billions of public funds trying to blackmail you into getting an experimental shot, everyone and their grandma is now a shill, and some celebrities are having fun with it.

Mariah Carey posted this video to her Instagram recently and I’ve bothered to notate it. There is a popular “conspiracy theory” that 5G is completely harmless because it didn’t cause Covid, so someone from the Mariah team decided to make a funny joke about the note “G6” being a vaccine side effect. Lolz all around.

Indeed Mariah does sing a high G6 as she is jabbed with an experimental substance in the video below.

Vaccine side effect: G6

Big Pharma astroturf campaigns are so much fun, especially when taxpayers foot the bill. Not one artist dares to speak out. The biggest medical experiment in human history and you’re not allowed to criticize it. Van “the Man” Morrison is the only artist I know who has been consistently anti-lockdown, probably because Sir Van is already knighted and can’t be canceled. Meanwhile, the DIY anarcho-crust bands are singing the praises of Pfizer and Moderna. Dolly Parton shamelessly parodied her own song “Jolene” with “Vaccine.” Even the President is a Big Pharma whore, no matter which president you believe in.

Everyone always hated the American healthcare system, until now. These same heroic vaccine-makers are all convicted felons, guilty of fraud, lying, maiming, murder, and the biggest lawsuits in history. They caused the opioid crisis, although no one accuses me of being an “anti-drugger” for pointing that out. Suddenly, all of these evil corporations who value profits over people have found Jesus. Amen and awomen!

The social pressure to take these vaccines is unreal, and it only took a multibillion dollar taxpayer-funded indoctrination campaign to achieve it. All the guinea pigs are taking vax selfies like it’s their civic duty. New York State is rolling out vaccine passports to get into Mets games. Normally, I don’t make public comments like this (on a music blog), but this situation is really quite insane and everyone is too scared to speak out. Luckily I have so little to lose. I will die before I let the government coerce me to take an aspirin, let alone an experimental gene therapy.

Dear reader, there is no reason to take these vaccines. They do not prevent infection or transmission. They only treat mild symptoms for a disease with a survival rate over 99.9% for most of the population. These vaccines were rushed out in a year and are not FDA-approved. Even if you get vaxxed, you will still have to muzzle up like the rest of us untouchables. The New Normal and the Great Reset aren’t going away because you sacrificed your bodily liberty. Of course, they will blame any future outbreaks on “anti-vaxxers” and not “leaky vaccines.” We’re headed for a full-on apartheid society with a permanent underclass, all controlled by the Big Tech social credit system. This ain’t some conspiracy. It’s all unfolding right now. They won’t let us out of our cages just because we do whatever they tell us. This nightmare will only end when we stop complying.

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Huey

2 April 2021, 5:23 pm

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The Jogger

24 March 2021, 12:19 pm

We made this short inspirational film. Please watch “The Jogger” and comment below why you like it.

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Nuttin’ But Net

19 March 2021, 4:39 pm

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