Mystery Ostinato (I think?)

Hello, friends!

A longer and longer interval of time goes by between blog posts here, but, rest assured, I still get songs stuck in my head (and still love getting them stuck in yours!)

This classical or operatic melody came to me this morning. I still know as little about music theory as ever, but a cursory search online tells me this repeating sequence of four notes that change only slightly might be called an ostinato. It's super famous; I'm sure you know it, too. No idea what piece of popculture I know it from, though odds are Looney Tunes, as usual.

I used this virtual piano tool to tenuously suss out the notes, starting with a mid-range G, which was close to the tone I had in my head.

Please help me identify this tune, and where you know it from!

Perfect Circle - Mystery Solved (and sorry for the wait!)

 

Okay, y'all - what even is time these days, amirite? I posted this Mystery Song ten months ago?! Anyway, I solved it pretty soon afterwards, but I never got around to posting the answer. Here we are, finally!

The Mystery Song from November last year turns out to be REM's "Perfect Circle," from their 1983 album, Murmur. It's the last seven syllables of the chorus phrase

"standing too soon, shoulders high in the room."

Above, I've made a better rendition since the original from-the-top-of-my-head attempt.

The video below is queued up to the best example in the actual song, at about 2:38 mins:



It's not surprising to me that it was an REM song (they're historically one of the most frequent bands in my head) but, in an appeal for ideas from my friends on Facebook back when this happened, my friend Joe pointed out that the melody is similar to Barry Manilow's beautiful "Weekend in New England."

I absolutely think that my neural path memory in this case cleaved close to the Manilow tune on this recollection! And I do wonder if Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe were unconsciously influenced by it, despite how cool they thought they were!

My online synth re-creation of the REM tune was misleading in a couple ways. One, the tempo of the actual song is slower, and two, the rhythm of the notes is steadier and less "waltzy" than I made it. These two things are also true of the Manilow song.

And here's "Weekend in New England" for comparison. The similar melodic interval is heard right away, and then gets repeated in the chorus:

 

Thanks everyone for playing along!

Artist: REM

Year: 1983

Rating: Luke Hot

Artist: Barry Manilow
Year: 1976 (Yet another song from the US Bicentennial year!)

Rating: Warm

 

Name This Tune! (Solved!)

 

 

My dear readers,

It's been such a long time since I posted about the songs knocking around in my head - four years, in fact, since my last update! But I had this mystery tune on the brain yesterday, and thought I'd appeal to you to help me identify it! No idea what it is, how old it is, why it's in my head, anything. Let me know in the comments if you have a guess!

This is the super neat tool I used to make the video:
Online Sequencer

The Mystery Songs tag is one of my favorites, check 'em all out!
Mystery Songs

May all your earworms be merry, my friends!

Status: solved!

Mystery Solved...and Stashed

That tune. That tune! That tune has been knocking around in my head for so many years. I blogged about it back in 2011. I thought it was from a really old movie, or a novelty riff from Camper Van Beethoven, or something vaguely Eastern European. People close to me have heard me whistle it spontaneously now and again for the better part of two decades, and any time I've inquired with anyone about that sequence of notes, I've gotten nothing but shrugs and blank stares.

I once thought I was hot on the trail, when I came across
this 1932 composition by Jerzy Petersburski. There are some segments in this Polish tango reminiscent of the tune, but I knew when I found it, I was still shooting in the dark. Bonus: a fragment of this tango also reminds me of the “When the dog bites, when the bee stings” portion of My Favorite Things from the Sound of Music.

So, after years of this nagging sensation as to the origins of this melody, last weekend, it happened. I ended up in a somewhat random conversation about the band Phish with my niece, niece-in-law, and my two nephews. My nephew Jon,* was recommending a podcast called Analyze Phish. In it, comedian Harris Wittels, Phish Phan, tries to convince comedian Scott Aukerman, Phish naysayer, why he should love Phish. In a parallel, I went through a Phish phase (college in Santa Cruz in the '90s, natch), while Jon is the non-fan.

So I decided to jump on Spotify and put together some Phish songs that I thought might appeal to Jon, just for the hell of it. I played snippets of songs from albums I used to own, to refamiliarize myself with the music. While scrolling through the tracks on the 1992 album A Picture of Nectar, I made a totally unexpected discovery at two minutes and two seconds into the song "Stash:"


And the motif repeats itself at the end of the song, at minute 6:49, accompanying the lyrics "Maybe so, and maybe not."

Oh my fucking god!! The thrill of finding the source of this tune was visceral. It was like unwrapping my new Darth Vader Collector’s Case on Chanukah, 1982.** Or the satisfaction of writing one’s thousandth tweet. It was gleeful! I still can’t explain the very definite six-note intro to the song snippet that I always whistle, which is clearly not anywhere to be found in the Phish song. I don't know if I composed it unconsciously, or if it's an amalgam of some other melody. It’s no matter. I can rest on this one.

Artist: Phish
Year: 1992
Rating: Luke Hot

* Jon guest blogged for us at The Songs in My Head a few years ago. You can read those posts right here.
** I just learned that Google only returns 1.5 million results for “Chanukah,” my preferred transliteration for the Jewish Festival of Lights, and returns 15.7 million for “Hanukkah.” Am I spelling it wrong? Maybe so, and maybe not.

Still the Same

Officially the first tune in my head in 2012. I spontaneously started whistling it on Muni last night on the move between two New Year's destinations. I knew it was a Bob Seger song, but couldn't come up with any lyrics or the title. When I whistled the melody to my friend Ricky, he made a great guess: Best of My Love by the Eagles. The tunes are incredibly similar. The magical internets have helped me solve the problem, so I don't have to resort to posting a Mystery Song entry. :)

Happy New Year, all!

Artist: Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band
Year: 1978
Rating: Warm

New Mystery Song!

Hello, readers!

Mystery songs are always fun entries, 'cause you get to play along at home! Here's a tune that has been in my head on a regular basis for years; I have no idea what it is. My best guess (though this could be way off!) is that it infiltrated my brain waves at some point when I was in college or just after, so perhaps between 14 and 18 years ago. Because of that timing, or perhaps due to some other idiosyncratic memory association with the tune, I've long thought it may be a traditional instrumental that was repurposed by either Camper Van Beethoven or They Might Be Giants. I happen to know a founding member of Camper Van,* and whistled it for him recently. He assured me it wasn't one of their tunes. (Please do check out Chris Molla's excellent blog, by the way! It's full of fascinating discussions of music, composition, performance art, and politics and culture.)


So, if any of you out there wanna wager a guess about the origin of this song, please do! I'm so curious about it, as it is an integral part of my mental soundscape, and I whistle it, unconsciously or quite consciously, multiple times a week.

*This statement reminds me of the scene I am very fond of in Annie Hall in which the guy behind Alvie (Woody Allen) in line at the movies name-drops Marshall McLuhan, and then Alvie pulls McLuhan out of the wings to support his assertion that the guy is a pretentious nitwit. Does name-dropping Chris Molla now make me a pretentious nitwit, I wonder?

**NEWSFLASH** The mystery has been solved! Four years after posting this entry, I finally figured out how this song came into my consciousness. Check out my update right here!

The Villain's Theme

Well, the mystery has been solved, as least, it seems so. Once again, my friend Buffy has saved the day. You may remember her sleuthing skills from the mystery of the Infernal Gallup. Now, she's helped us figure out what the hell that spooky, sneaky cartoon music is. A ringtone of the song is listed as "Cartoon Creeping Music" at AudioSparx. The real title turns out to be an appropriately-named composition called The Villain's Theme, and Amazon.Com credits it to Al Weber (and his Repetitious 88 Keys). However, the packaging on the "Memories" collection "Silent Film Music" available at Amazon credits him as Al Webber (with two b's).

Thing is, I don't think that Mr. Web(b)er is the originator of the piece, since this album, released in 1995, features music from other composers, all credited to Al (I don't think he can take credit for the William Tell Overture, for example). I think Webber and his Repetitious Keys performed all the tunes in this collection, but the piece was penned by somebody else. We also don't know how old it is yet. It could have been published anywhere from the late 19th Century to the early 1930s if it did feature in silent films.

The internets don't seem to have anything on this Al Webber guy, nor his 88 Repetitious Keys. Searches yield results for "A.L. Webber," but I don't imagine that the high-profile Andrew Lloyd Webber had to do compilation CDs for extra cash in the '90s. If anyone has any feedback or more information on this composition, please leave a comment!

Artist: Al Webber (and his 88 Repetitious Keys); composer unknown
Year: c. 19th Century to 1930s
Rating: Warm

Thanks, Buffy, for your ever present diligence, curiosity, and mad research skills!

Spooky instrumental

Mystery song time again, kids!

This song was in my head about a month ago, but I just could not find a sample of it online. Naturally, that's hard to do when one doesn't know the name of the composition or the composer. It's certainly one of those songs that I know from cartoons; I'm guessing from a very old black and white one. If I told you it's the "spooky" music playing to the visual of a character tiptoeing, would you know the song I was talking about?

I found this nifty virtual keyboard site online and tapped out the notes there.



The sequence I'm playing is:

C D# G C1 G# G F D# D, then back to C.

Can anybody name that tune?

Infernal Gallop

My dear friend Buffy, whom I've known since the sixth grade, musical era of Thriller and Madonna's first album, has cracked the case of the mystery classical song rather brilliantly. From the rudimentary schematic of musical notes I offered in that entry, Buffy deduced, correctly, that the song was a 19th Century composition by Jacques Offenbach from his operetta Orpheus in the Underworld. I imagine many of us know it as a song that Bugs Bunny can-canned to. The part that was in my head starts at 1:28.

 

Here's the comment thread from my Facebook page in which the revelation was made: 

 
Lisa
What instrument(s) are playing? If you want to call and sing it in to my cell phone I might be able to figure it out :)

about an hour ago ·  

Buffy

I know exactly what song you're talking about (great description btw!). Now am checking my Looney Tunes dvd to hear the rest and figure out who/what it is....

44 minutes ago · 

Buffy

Hmmmmm... wasn't on the episode I thought it was on. Pretty sure it's all strings. Vivaldi maybe? I'll keep lookin'

34 minutes ago ·

 

Jon ahhh i know exactly what you're talking about too but i don't know what or who it is. you're definitely right about strings.

28 minutes ago ·
Buffy Phew! Found it: The composer is Jacques Levy Offenbach. The song is "Infernal Gallup" from the opera Orpheus in the Underworld

21 minutes ago ·

Jon

wow nice work.

17 minutes ago ·

Buffy

Thanks! Had to figure it out before it drove me crazy too! :) Now if I can only find a job that will pay me for my superb research skills... lol

15 minutes ago ·

Sooze Buffy - pure genius!! That's totally it! I'll post a follow up. Wow, y'all got it quicker than I thought you would. Any chance we could reproduce this conversation in the comments on the blog?

11 minutes ago ·

Buffy

Can't ya copy/paste it? ;)

Hmm...I can do that! Just another one of Buffy's brillllliant ideas! Thanks, Buff!
Artist: Jacques Offenbach
Year: 1858
Rating: Warm

Mystery Classical Song

I have a line from a classical composition in my head today. I have no idea what it is. Anyone have a guess? Apologies to all you music theory people out there, but it goes sort of like this:

DUN--dun--dun--dun (moderate tempo)
dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun (really fast)

In terms of how the notes relate to each other, it's like this:

DUN
dun
dun
dun

dun
dun        dun
dun dun                           dun
dun

The person who guesses right on this hackneyed description gets special mention in the blog! Leave comments with your ideas and/or links to YouTube videos!