Ringtonetime
I get real pissy when music is used as a cellphone ringtone. It still jars the hell out of me when a song abruptly sputters out of a tinny cellphone speaker, and the absolute worst is when no-one answers and so it repeatedly loops through the first 5 seconds. Don’t even get me started on ringtones which are actually supposed to be played on an orchestra.
However, after complaining about all that in a somewhat uptight and snobby fashion, if I absolutely HAD to choose a piece of classical music to use as a ringtone I think the first 30 seconds or so of this would be pretty swell:
And that’s because… DUN DUN DUN… it sounds like a freakin’ telephone.
That’s the second movement of Nielsen’s Symphony No. 6
Off Sabbatical
Hello world. I’m still existing, see? Just being a tad slack and regrouping. A break is always useful, in almost every pursuit (except maybe for things like air traffic controlling, or life-support machine running, or other such hundred-percent essentials) in order to function properly and not go crazy and caught up the wrong way around. Beside the standing back aspect, it’s been another particularly crazy, stuff-filled week featuring (but not limited to) giving two presentations and taking an ultra-short/ultra-intense course in biochemistry.
I also got a well-fancy new phone, which brings up an interesting dilemma. The ringer one. Do I destroy for all time my appreciation of a piece of music, by using it as a ringtone? Because it’s all fancy and not three years old, I can stick whatever piece of music is desired into the ringtone slot. This is not only a privilege but a necessity, since all the built-in ones are annoyingly noodly. However, from past experience, whichever piece of music undergoes this will cease to have certain musical properties in the future. It will forever be a ringtone, a harbinger of the “reach for the pants pocket” move.
In the end it was decided (by a large and ineffective committee consisting of me) that we could sacrifice a ballet to the ringtone gods, since those movements are brief and independent of each other (so the whole piece won’t be destroyed even if one movement is). The “winner” of the competition is:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Which is fairly obscure, I think. Anyone recognize it…?
Now I’m feeling guilty about using it as a ringtone. Eugh. I feel dirty even typing that word. Ring-tone. Maybe I’ll switch back to using the one that sounds like an old fashioned telephone, in order to preserve my classical karma.