pop quiz (followup)

[cellio]

Yesterday I asked what's wrong with this ad? This produced some very interesting answers, which I'll unscreen momentarily.

When I saw the ad I immediately (well, within two or three seconds) said to myself "that's the wrong melody!". No matter what part of the bell you consider the "note head" to be (bottom? center of gravity? something else?), the first seven notes must be the same, and they're not. For the record, I parsed the first six as Bs, though the third is leaning toward A, and the seventh -- the first one on the next line -- as definitely an A. The second line is correct except for all being down a step from the previous line. And there's the issue of key signature.

I didn't notice the repeat markers at all, while most of the people who commented did. (Aside: is the repeat structure on the second line well-formed? The repeat at the end of the first line implicitly returns to the beginning of the song, but doesn't the second line require a |: mark at the beginning?)

I noticed right away that they wrote "jingles" instead of "jingle" in the second line, but I decided that it was a play on the name of the candy and thus not wrong. As someone else pointed out, it's never been clear whether "jingle" is a verb or an adjective in this context anyway. One could make a case for "jingle all the way" being a noun phrase with an implicit "there exist(s)" prefix; if you do that then "jingles" is not incorrect. Of course, if "jingle" is a verb then there's a grammatical problem in that line.

A couple of people noted the absence of temporal values (so did I) and pursued the idea of color-encoded values (a very clever idea I didn't think of). The ad didn't take that approach, alas; the first two trios of notes would have required the same color sequence.

Some people pointed out the scansion problems in their additional text. I didn't try to parse that as lyrics, so I didn't notice that.

Edit: And special kudos to cvirtue, who noticed that those aren't sleigh bells. :-)

Comments

[geekosaur]

No matter what part of the bell you consider the "note head" to be (bottom? center of gravity? something else?), the first seven notes must be the same, and they're not.

The bells are so big that it's not worth trying to figure a "note head"; the "error bars" span multiple notes. So I didn't consider it significant. (Example: if there is a "note head", it would be dependent on orientation unless exactly centered — but the orientation of each bell is different.)

[geekosaur]

Oh, and yes the repeat bars are malformed. I counted that as part of the general incorrectness of the repeat bars.

[eub.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I checked the melody first off, and decided it was "close enough if one is being charitable".

[cellio]

I couldn't tell where the note heads were supposed to be (I had a guess), but consistency still matters. The first notes on each line, for example, require the same note value per the music, are in similar orientations, and are clearly (to me) in different places on the staff.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Closer than what you'd get from a group of carolers picked at random from the typical office staff...

TMI re: bells

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I'm bell-centered at the moment, so it hardly counts. ;)

Sleigh bells are always of the rumble-bell variety, not the clapper variety. Rumble bells are the ones with a loose-moving pea of metal that makes the noise; either classic "jingle bells" with four petals that fold inwards or the very closed sort usually with an equitorial seam, used on dog collars or sleigh bells.

The latter often have ornamental piercings; for example, Michael's craft stores are selling large ones with snowflake-shaped holes this season. The ones for dogs often have bone-shaped piercings.