Don't do drugs!!

One of the few subjects I would love to study out of sheer fascination (but don't because there's no future career prospects in it) is music theory. I had one of the most profound experiences in my life in the Milv sometime early Spring 2006 when I saw a documentary (on the BBC, of course, all hail the mighty Beeb!) about the Beatles and why exactly they were so bloody famous.

It's not all to do with how cool they were, or the timing, or the lyrics (though I know some get off more on the lyrics than the music so they are definitely a big part of it), but mainly because (and this is somewhat hazy, but I remember the gist of it): there are only a certain number of combination of notes that are pleasurable to the human brain. These belong, by tradition, in certain types of music, and go in and out of use with time and culture.

The Beatles somehow used (came up with? discovered? depends on how you look at it) ones that have not been around for awhile and so their music was fresh (to a 1960s ear anyway). I can't recall much more details than this other than that ABBA was mentioned in these circumstances as well - their melodies were also re-inventing music and thus highly 'catchy' for people all around the world, regardless of what language you speak (music is universal and boundary-less, yadda yadda and TRUE).

Anyway. This theory is prooved further by the Eurovision Song Contest. Yes, 2008 they won because of the goddamn skater (I used to like him but I now boycot him, so good for him he doesn't compete anymore!) but this year it was that chorus, that bloody violin chorus. Most people joke heavily about folk elements in the Eurovision but this combination of notes was so heady, so powerful, that all over Europe people chose to vote for Norway despite them being rich bastards with their oil and fantastic social security and chirpy language. Can't blame it on the number of neighbouring countries either as has been the case the last few years.

The guy who won wasn't even a particularly likeable chap, and everyone moaned post-win about his Polish parents making him practice 5h a day supporting the highly un-likeable theory that everyone can become a pro with the amount of practice fery few of us could ever bother with.
Nope. It was that chorus that won. Pure music crack.

Anyway. For the last few weeks Humanoid has been my crack. The lesson to learn is of course that everything that can be compared to drugs will probably have repercussions. I got about two weeks of constant music-induced euphoria before things went to hell. I started out being careful, only listening on like volume 5 out of 40 in quiet areas. Soon, however, I had to raise the volume and play it on my CD-player to get the same kind of high. Now my tinnitus is back with a vengeance, bugging me all day, at work, at home, when I am about to sleep. So, crap.

Note: this was originally going to be a happy, fluffy post about the mathematic/musical geniuses who write music crack. I got interrupted mid-post and now that I'm finishing it a week later it's gone down-hill. Just, in case anyone got confused with the change of tone.

So people: MIND YOUR EARS, AND DON'T DO DRUGS.