gopher tuna

I've posted about alternative lyrics to Carl Orff's O Fortuna before. However, I recently came across another version, and realised there are alternative alternatives.  There are several versions on YouTube, with their surreal lyrics (but little more so that some possibly drug induced lyrics of real songs) made even more surreal by the accompanying pictures. (A few pics may be mildly NSFW, depending where you work, but they are uniformly wonderful.)  My favourite version (which is the one I stumbled across today) has hand-sketched internet meme figures.

Realising that there are several versions, and that some extremely different readings seem to fit just as well, made me look up the original medieval Latin lyrics, and do a compare and contrast:

O Fortuna (O Fortune)	Oh, four tuna // Gopher tuna
velut luna (like the moon)	Bring more tuna
statu variabilis (you are changeable)	Statuary on his knees // Statue of big dog with fleas
semper crescis (ever waxing)	Some men like cheese // Cement like cheese
aut decrescis; (and waning;)	Hot, temperate cheese // Hot Democrat cheese
vita detestabilis (hateful life)	Vimto can taste of kidneys // Green chalk can taste like hippies // We took a taste of me knees
nunc obdurat (first oppresses)	Lukewarm two rat // You caught two rocks? // Look up, you brat
et tunc curat (and then soothes)	Bet too cool, rat // Pet two cool rats // That took cool rat
ludo mentis aciem, (as fancy takes it)	You don't get cheese or chicken // Luke don't make tea. Sore chicken
egestatem, (poverty)	Bend chips all day // Play chess all day
potestatem (and power)	Hot and salty // Hold his sock tip // Poke Tess all day
dissolvit ut glaciem. (it melts them like ice.)	Dip sore feet. Good, hot chilli // She sold me good, hot chicken
---
Sors immanis  (Fate - monstrous)	Saucy codpiece //  Saucy hot peas //  Saucy mommies
et inanis,  (and empty)	Ate spleen of neice //  Get me cod, please //  Get in on knees
rota tu volubilis,  (you whirling wheel)	Brought up too full food in me //  Rock talk to boy who believes //  Broke up to follow minis
status malus,  (you are malevolent)	Suck juice from moose
vana salus  (well-being is vain)	Fun with some goose //  Fun, handsome goose
semper dissolubilis,  (and always fades to nothing)	Second these so rude big knees //  Cement pizza? Noobie please! //   Second this, all who believes
obumbrata  shadowed)	Open bra top //  Open bar tab
et velata  (and veiled)	Get them loved up //  Get him locked up
michi quoque niteris;  (you plague me too;)	Leaking foot when near cherries //  Leaky aquariataries
nunc per ludum  (now through the game)	Look, they look good //  Look there! Fruitloop! //  Look, them look dumb //  Look there look good
dorsum nudum  (I bring my bare back)	Dogs sure look cute //  Don't sue YouTube //  Hot soup look good
fero tui sceleris.  (to your villainy.)	Farewell to knees and berries //  They wrote teh dictionary //  Farewell to ancient berries
---
Sors salutis  (Fate is against me)	Salsa cookies
et virtutis  (in health)	Windmill cookies
michi nunc contraria,  (and virtue)	They'll give you gonorrhea! //  They gave you gonorrhea!
est affectus  (driven on)	This octopus //  This know is loose
et defectus  (and weighted down)	Let's give him boots //  Let's cook this goose
semper in angaria.  (always enslaved.)	Send him a carburetor //  Send him to North Korea //  And give him half a pizza //  Send him a car or pizza
Hac in hora  (So at this hour)	Lovely Torah //  Ow, paper cut! //  Monkey, Dora
sine mora  (without delay)	Send me more of //  Sandpaper, ahh!
corde pulsum tangite;  (pluck the vibrating strings;)	Potato soup and chicken
quod per sortem  (since Fate)	What mess again? //  Go taste the dip! //  I miss old friend //  Hot mess all day
sternit fortem,  (strikes down the string)	Sing it, ugly //  It's made with cool whip!
mecum omnes plangite!  (everyone weep with me!)	Be good for Peace Monkey's sake //  Make room for a piece of lovely cake //  Be good for a piece of cake

Clearly these alternatives aren't all independent, but there's enough variety to be amusing. Most of the variation seems to be around lines that nothing fits very well.  Also, once a variant has been used, it appears to affect nearby versions: once you have rats in your head, they stay around.  I suspect that a trained historian could work out a family tree of which version influenced which.

Listening to any of the recordings whilst reading the original words is interesting: in some cases the words really being sung appear to fit just as poorly as some of the alternatives.  Presumably this is a combination of a large choir singing not quite simultaneously, in a foreign language, filtered through a non-perfect sound system.

Knowing what to listen for makes all the difference.  Once you are listening for "Vimto can taste of kidneys", it's easy to hear.  But then so is "Green chalk can taste like hippies".  These surreal lyrics are much easier to hear than alleged mumbled satanic phrases in rock music played backwards (but for the very same reason).

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taking the Fifth

Do I hear music differently from everyone else?  Last night, driving up the A1 to York, I was listening to Classic FM's Tchaikovsky evening.  This included a performance of the Fifth Symphony.  Now, Tchaikovsky's Fifth has long been a favourite of mine, ever since I was first introduced to classical music as an undergraduate.  And more recently, I've found the rousing final movement an interesting possible musical analogue of "open-ended evolution", in the sense that every time you think it's finished (except for the last time, of course!), it continues onwards and upwards, with a variation, or flourish, or difference, or interesting reprise. (Okay, yes, it can sometimes sound a little crude in places, but that can be overcome with a good performance.)

So I was astounded to hear the announcer describe the symphony as "melancholy", and that some had said that Tchaikovsky was "putting on a brave face" in that uplifting (to me) final movement.  What?

This is from a radio station that has a session called Smooth Classics where they seem to think that anything "slow" equates to "relaxing", rather than, on occasion, heart-rending.  So, I decide to check whether it was me, or the announcer. 

A quick look at wikipedia suggests ... something else, many somethings else: "gradually transforms into a triumphant march", "Tchaikovsky is expressing optimism with regard to providence", "the entire symphony seems to spring from some dark spiritual experience", "a horde of demons struggling in a torrent of brandy", and "slaughter, dire and bloody".

From this I conclude that not only do I hear music differently from everybody else, but so does everybody else!

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name that tune

I have great difficulty identifying tunes, even if I know them well. I have no way of asking for help, since all notes I sing are the same, and flat, even though I can hear the tune perfectly well inside my head.

So, many years ago I was excited to hear of a book that would help: it lists all tunes in order of whether their notes go up, down, or stay the same. I didn't know the author or title, but in 1990 I found copy --- it's "The Directory of Tunes" by Denys Parsons --- whilst browsing bookshelves. I excitedly bought it, thinking all my troubles were over (provided that the tune had been written before 1975, the book's publication date, of course).

How does it work? Well, consider a well known song, like "Do You Know the Way to San Jose".

Write a star for the first note: "*". Then, since the next note goes down, write a D: "*D". The third note goes up, so that's a U: "*DU". Keep going: "*DUUUD", etc. Then look up the resulting string in the book:

Perfect! Problem solved.

Except for one tiny thing. I can hear the tune in my head. But I can't tell if the notes go up, down, or stay the same (unless they change a lot). So I can't construct the string! The book has sat, unused, on my shelf for the last 20 years...

Last week I was round at some friends, and talk moved to discussing the Web, as it does. One of them was saying how much easier it was now that so many things were available to be looked up. I mentioned an anecdote told by Bertrand Meyer in 1999, about using the web to identify an opera he was listening to, and said that would only help if you have lyrics (and it would help me only if they were in English, and if I didn't fall foul of a Mondegreen).

The daughter of the house looked at me pityingly, and told me about Shazam. You point your phone in the direction of the music and "tag" it; the app records for about 10 seconds, sends it off, and the answer comes back. Perfect!

So, naturally, I downloaded the app then and there (well, after having a brisk discussion about whether it was Superman or Captain Marvel who said Shazam!), and we all spent the next few minutes playing random bits of music at it, and seeing what it could identify (despite the background noise of an excited budgie). At first I wondered if it was using a similar system to the book, but quickly realised it had to be quite different: you don't have to start at the beginning of the tune, and it not only tells you the song title, but also the artist -- and in the case of a piece of Mozart, the orchestra and conductor. So it must be matching against the actual recording. How does it work?

I found an article in the August 2006 issue of CACM which gives a brief explanation -- more technical detail can be found following the links from the wikipedia article. Essentially it looks for spectrogram peaks, takes adjacent pairs of these, does some hashing to increase the entropy, and matches the results against the music database. Many of these peaks are just noise, and so don't match. But enough do, with the added constraint that different pairs have to match at the right time intervals, to get a high quality matching system. So, a combination of a really clever algorithm and a massive database give a fantastic ability to match tunes.

But it's matching, not "recognition" as such. So it doesn't work with live music, including amateur singing (and I don't consider the noises I make to be singing as such). It's not quite the perfect system. But it's still mind-bogglingly amazingly useful.

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Me ears are alight

Last month I blogged on illusions, inspired by a Bad Astronomy blog entry on the "Flashed face distortion effect". In it I mentioned an aural illusion: the McGurk effect, where you perceive one of three different sounds, depending on whether you listen only, watch only, or do both.

Well, Bad Astronomy has a different example of the McGurk effect, from the BBC Horizon programme. This time, you perceive one of two different sounds, determined by the lip movements you observe whilst listening.

Interesting, of course, but what prompted my follow-up blog entry was a related comment, about mishearing song lyrics. This is accompanied to a link to O Fortuna from Carmina Burana, here transcribed as "oh, four tuna", and including lines like "some men like cheese", "Vimto can taste of kidneys", and more. Although one or two of the hypothesised lines are a little strained, the majority fit beautifully, giving a highly surreal reading.

This reminded me of a TV advert from the late 1980s (for Maxell batteries), on mishearing the lyrics to Desmond Dekker's The Israelites. Naturally, it's on You Tube.

A misheard song lyric (or line of poetry, or whatever) is known as a Mondegreen. Before I ever knew the name given to this effect, I'd come across it in Maurice Dodd's Perishers cartoon strip: Baby Grumplin's teddy-bear is called "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear". There are lots of other examples I've heard from people over the years: "The ants are my friends", "Lucy in disguise", "Beelzebub has a devil for a sideboard", "Reverend Blue Jeans", and more.

Nowadays, the web makes it a lot easier to find the actual lyrics, of course. But if you don't know you've misheard it, there's no reason to look it up. (And let's face it, many lyrics are frankly unintelligible even if you know what the words are, so incomprehension is no real reason to suspect a mishearing.) Yet even after hearing a song a gazillion times, I can still sometimes suddenly hear it differently, and go, "Oh, so that's what that line is!" I doubt that my ears are more alight to the words: maybe it's because CDs are higher quality than cassette tapes and radios, even without the excuse of fading batteries?

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