Hello BadNick.

You are right about the name of the piece.

" 4'33" was inspired by Cage's visit to Harvard's anechoic chamber, designed to eliminate all sound; but instead of promised silence Cage was amazed and delighted to hear the pulsing of his blood and the whistling of his nerves. "

the man who sold the world.
all the time.
the opening riff.
i dont understand it.


and when i am riding, for some reason, i get this depeche mode loop going in my skull. over and over.



what drives me nuts about this assemblage is that the songs are in the same fucking key. so it must have to do with some frequencies generated by chicagospace. maybe the sound of bike wheels on chicago-pavement. maybe traffic and the way the sound echoes. maybe the el. i dont know, but once these loops start--and particlarly once they start blurring into each other--ugh....earworms. hate them. you cant swat them, you cant crush them on your arm and watch the blood that was being sucked spread. you cant get rid of them.

=======================

on cage's 4'33"

i like that there exists a string of recordings of this piece.
i particularly like the london symphony's version.
they dont play like any other group that doesnt play for that duration.
excellent stuff.

the piece is interesting, though, in that its about ambient sound--that's the way in which it comes out of the anechoic chamber story--which cage told and told and told and told and told. its about the situational definition of music as over against sound. music is a subset of sound. what distinguishes music is compositional intent----compositional intent results in structure---and structure is duration. so what matters really about 4'33" is its duration.

that's also why anything you record----anything at all----is music.

roachboy,
you post is music to my ears

When you say "...anything you record...is music" I wonder how the fluctuating/evolving definition of "...record..." might effect someone's opinion whether it's music, or not.

badnick:

i dont think it would, really...any recording fixes a duration (assigns it a beginning and an end) so any recording generates structure.
so its music regardless of what folk might think of the contents.
it's a bit perverse.
there's more to say about this, but i have an appointment...

in what way do you not understand it?

..

http://leekspin.com/

Who can last the longest? I spent 3 days there. Nonstop...
When I was sleeping... *shudders at memory*

Anyway, it's a Finnish folklore song. I can't remember what it means.
The clip is from the first episode of the anime Bleach where that girl is discussing what she is going to be putting in her breakfast.
It's not a leek though. It's something related to it.

*Smart in the anime and useless information ways.*

By pure coincidence I was bored and looking around Youtube for old bands I used to listen to and found this one.....




This not only fits the theme here, but makes fun of anime at least in my perspective.

sion:


why of all possible phrases, that one detaches itself from the song and repeats in my brain until that fucking depeche mode song gets conjured, then they run together for a while as a kind of infernal mashup.

the opening riff comes from a song i kinda like, so its not like other earworms adduced here.

and the fact that this is a chicago=specific earworm (for me anyway) baffles me even more. that's why i was wondering about the ambient sounds, dominant pitches (even those which you cant hear--ask people in a city to hum a pitch long enough and they'll find a tone that you can link to electrical current...)

flat5:

a fixed duration is a structure.
sound features that are strung together within a fixed duration (in a recording) are compositional features.
you can learn them by repeating the recording.
as you learn them, you impose or infer (its hard to say which) patterns.
these patterns are musical.

a piece of recording equipment is simply one device that allows you to fix durations.

audio recordings of my refrigerator are lovely music--very complex juxtapositions of sine waves. if i played such a recording between others of, say,. tape music, you wouldnt know that it was just my refrigerator running.

whether something is music at the level of structure and whether you like it are different.
you might not like my refrigerator sound. but 4'33" of it is just as much music as a chamber piece, or a pop tune, or anything else.

the distinctions are about mapping your aesthetic preferences: what you dont like, you might call noise. but that's only about what you do or dont like--it says nothing about the question of whether 4'33" of refrigerator sounds--which contain considerable complexity--is music or not.

i HATE that i found this song. i cannot exorcize it. help.



This weekend, i've had these stuck...



and the only version i could find without children in it...


someone save me from myself.

who the hell cares if I am showing my age. How would you like
Gypsies Tramps and Thieves, by Cher overidden by Seasons in the Sun,
by Terry Jacks? Karma must be kickin.

Fast forward to 'Ant Music'

Man... I haven't heard Cranberries' Zombie in the longest time, thanks for the refresher...

Man, that song was on the '94 album... I remember using the song in a video project in high school in 96 or 97... scary as hell to think that was 10 years ago.

MANAMANA!!!!! AHHHHHH!!!!!!

-Will

You have to hear Cake perform Mahna Mahna. Easy to find and stream from SeeqPod Music, but you can't link to anything directly.

I woke up singing Reba McEntire's "The Stairs" (The Last One to Know), but now that I read this thread I have even more, esp. "Manamana" and "White and Nerdy".

Outstanding! Many thanks.

Excellent. Now I know how to spell it. Cake's version is up there with the Muppet Show...

eh.. it's okay. I guess this is the one that became the VW commercial?

Cyn - thanks for showing me that embedding trick, I'll use it in the future. I haven't seen the VW ad, so I couldn't comment on that. I just like how much they make the song their own, and how many variations they use. Feel free to dislike it. :D

I thought VW made DaDaDa their song (you know, by Trio). oops, now that's stuck in my head.

Brady Bunch theme song. Gilligan's Island theme song. Raider's of the Lost Ark theme song. Alot of old theme songs popping into my head this week and get stuck. Raider's I don't mind. Gilligan's makes me smile. Brady Bunch drives me nuts.

sorry, I don't dislike it. I just don't put it up to par with the muppets.

dammit, it almost got stuck in my head.

and because I used that seeqpod service, I got another one...

stuck in my head now...

Bumblebee Tuna by Mephiskapheles

After reading the Robert Goulet thread, I now have "If Ever I Would Leave You" stuck in my head. Think I'm going to have to listen to it...

Heh, I LOVE the Mephiskapheles song. It's been in my collection for at least 10 years now.

And the Raider's theme was always our 'data processing' theme: if a query was running slowly, the Raider's theme will speed it up.

The Raider's theme is my ringtone.

look it up yerselves, for I am too lazy, yeah, you tube has it.
I don't like mondays, boomtown rats, My old mates took a good hashing.
Brenda Spencer,pre-cursor to dylan and klebold.
The piano stays in my head forever,
my sister went to that school.

The Friggin Mickey Mouse Club House theme OMG...if you have a kid between 2 and 5 you know what i mean

Theme from Dukes of Hazard ... "Just Good Old Boys" ... is my ringtone, so it gets stuck in my head. I'll have to see if I can download Raiders sometime, but my cell doesn't seem to want to visit the Cingular ringtone store anymore for some reason.

Cyn, which one do you not dislike, but doesn't rate up with the muppets? Geez, got the muppet song in my head now, and I'm on my way to Dad's birthday party.

I've had this stuck in my head for days now..... enjoy~!

Cake perform Mahna Mahna, I like the muppets version the best.

and now I'm hearing the end of the Muppet Show theme song.



It's time to play the music
It's time to light the lights
It's time to meet the Muppets on the Muppet Show tonight.

I'm too easily suggestible.

I was dancing to this in my underwear earlier. I can't stop.

I often get songs by The Clash stuck on loop in my brain. Train In Vain is the main one.

London Calling gets stuck in mine...but I dont mind, coz it's a killer tune.

That was a favorite around our house. It's a great potty training song if you change it to..."Come on Barbie Let's Go Potty." Hey, quit smirking. Anything that works, works.

Cyn, that was an interesting take on the Bumblebee Tuna song. I like it.

The ones stuck in my head this morning are Sesame Street, and Elmo's World. (can ya guess what we're watching on my day off?)

... TO BE REAL!

Oh, man, I remember when that song was new. So long ago.

Theme song to Super Mario Brothers gets stuck in my head sometimes, and i haven't played it in years.

Extremely useful fact I have discovered: Where It's At, by Beck, is the perfect song, to permanenty erase anything annoying that is stuck in your head. It is more catchy than almost anything, so easily trumps whatever tune is bothering you, but doesn't loop, so transitions easily into an ending.

http://musicglob.com/wp-content/uplo...ere-its-at.mp3

Seriously, I am not even slightly joking. I've used (and told other people to use) this technique almost without failure for years. Start singing the opening keyboard parts (do, da-do do da DAH...) to yourself, and let the whole song play out, and tada! Whatever was stuck in your head is now gone. If you're not yet familiar enough with it to sing it through, come to this thread and play it, and hum along.

Does Beck trump Beck?
Will it get rid of 'Loser' also?

I've had Dropkick Murphys "Kiss Me, I'm &$*#! Faced" in my head all day.

I think that Gorillaz, Clint Eastwood will get rid of Beck's Loser..... It did for me.