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 so it was.

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.