So I was thinking about The Sound of Music while mowing my lawn. (Lawn mowing is a contemplative time for me). A classic movie, to be sure, even if the title manages to be redundant despite being four words long. Does one truly have music without sound? For example, could a hill be alive with the taste, touch, smell, or sight of music? It could only be the sound, right? Consider:
1) The hills are alive with the sound of music.
2) The hills are alive with music.
Perhaps I’m missing some nuance, but those seem like equivalent statements to me, and one of them is inefficient. I think the movie could have been bold enough to just claim the stark title Music outright.
But that’s not even my main point. Let’s review some song lyrics:
Do – a deer, a female deer
Re – a drop of golden sun
Mi – a name I call myself
Fa – a long long way to run
So – a needle pulling thread
La – a note to follow so
Ti – a drink with jam and bread
That will bring us back to Do (Repeat 37 times)
Being ignorant of most things musical I am loathe to criticize Rodgers and/or Hammerstein, but doesn’t the “La” part seem a bit lame compared to the rest? Was that really the best they could do? Or maybe I’m ill-equipped to appreciate what may be a precise bit of deliberate whimsy, without which The Sound of Music would’ve been the musical equivalent of Mall Cop instead of a timeless international classic.
One should not criticize songwriters without first singing a mile in their shoes. So here’s an engineer’s crack at a modern version of the song. I think it’s the only song I’ve ever written, unless you count the time in high school when I wrote a full parody of Stairway to Heaven for the sole purpose of making fun of another kid’s shirt. (You can only imagine how cool I was in high school).
I recommend using your imagination and having Julie Andrews sing this for full effect. It may take a couple of tries to make the syllables fit the familiar tune, but it can be done:
Do – what Homer calls raw bread
Re – X-rays can look inside
Mi – to see, if I am sick
Fa – hrenheit, a temperature scale
So – Conjunction Junction function
La – bad luck with hurricanes
Ti – Mister from the A-Team
That will bring us back to D’oh! (Repeat 37 times)
How hard was that? Next time I bump into Julie Andrews I’ll see if she’ll record an exclusive version for the blog.
#1 by Mom - June 12th, 2009 at 05:24
I’m glad when you mow your mind wanders to fun things and not problems/troubles.
I look forward to every blog since I never know what you might come up with next.
#2 by He who turns paper on its back - June 13th, 2009 at 07:16
Quite interesting. Particularly that “La – a note to follow so” is the actual lyric. To be painfully honest, I thought it was “Law – a note to follow soul”. …like, a law is a legal note… I never thought about it enough to question. Well, you know how a lot of people have these hodge-podge made up lyrics in their heads because they couldn’t hear clearly
(their stereo had the base turned up too high or the vocalist thought it would be cool to not annunciate well). For all you know, somebody was already thinking the lyrics you made up are the real ones. I had a friend who thought Huey Lewis’s “Hip to be Square” was “Hit the B-Square”. Still, truth is stranger than fiction. There was a #1 song in the US for a long time and the lyrics went: “The candy man, the candy man, the candy man can. The candy man can cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good”. Sometimes I think I must have dreamt that.
#3 by He who says hi to Sunday School teachers - June 15th, 2009 at 13:43
Though I am not sure if they rhyme or fit the beat, I like your new lyrics a lot. They are amusing. You engineers sure have an interesting way of looking at things. Here as a point of interest are the official lyrics in Japanese:
Do – ha donut no do (coincidentally, another reference to Homer)
Re – ha lemon no re (please accept that these all rhyme in Japanese)
Mi – ha minna (literally “everybody”) no mi
Fa – ha fight no fa
So – ha aoizora (“blue sky”)
La – ha rappa (“trumpet”, from European origin?) no la
Shi – ha shiawase (“happiness and joy”) yo
Sa, utaimashou (“so let’s sing”)
I can envision sometime in the past your Japanese archetype (or arktype?) gleefully taking advantage of the opportunity to improve on the lyrics.
#4 by Mark - June 15th, 2009 at 14:31
So the real lyrics, when translated into Japanese, include the word “donut” in the first line? And my made up lyrics referenced Homer Simpson in that line? This is so unlikely that it cannot be a simple coincidence. More likely it’s a sign that I’m just operating at such a high level that I don’t even realize it when I’m doing it. By the way, I hear this blog is huge among Japanese fans of The Sound of Music.
#5 by Mark - June 15th, 2009 at 23:15
Yet another example of what’s great about moms. Most people would read this post and wonder, at least in passing, whether I may actually be unfit to operate a lawnmower. But a mom? She’s just glad I’m not thinking about problems. I may be in my own little world, but it’s a happy place.