Last night I was idling on twitter and saw Simon Gough ask:
- “Anybody who just watched that #bbc4 programme on automata: any idea what the music at the end was?”
He got one reply quickly from @nataliecvincent who suggested using Shazam, but there was no answer straight away.
Putting aside my chagrin at having missed a programme on automata, I had a quick look at iPlayer and found it lacking. I playfully asked Simon:
- “@mistergough not on iPlayer yet, can you whistle it for us?”
Half expecting him to grin and tell me where to shove it, I made a cup of tea. When I came back I found that he’d uploaded this!
At which point Laura arrived home, so I played it to her and she said “Oh yes that’s Beethoven, you know: lah lah-lah laaaaah lah” and started to sing the same theme. But I couldn’t place it. So we got out iTunes and started looking at Ludwig van B. “9th?”, “No that’s Ode to Joy”, “5th?”, “NO, that’s dun-dun-dun-dunnnnh!”. “Ah, 7th, second movement?”, “Yes that’s it!”
And that’s why we love this stuff.
Anyway it also sparked an idea in me about audio reaction clips – y’know like reaction gifs, only sound – kind of canned laughter for tumblr. Or something.
I heard that piece played – very powerfully – in the Festival a couple of weeks ago! 🙂