Fans of The Office will remember the scene in which Dunder Mifflin employee Andy Bernard proudly introduces his patented cell phone ringtone consisting of an a capella arrangement of Rockin' Robin featuring multiple vocal parts all performed by Andy Bernard.
Now, I remember when a ringtone was a feature. Oooh! You can change the ringer! Aaah! You can upload your own songs! (Meaning, download songs from the provider at a dollar a piece.) Since then, the lowly ringtone has somehow...mutated...from an obscure cell phone gimmick, to a cultural monster. Love ringtones or hate them; you won't be permitted to escape them. Is a Nelson laugh appropriate here?
Anyway, after watching the episode, I decided to dust off the piano and compose and record a ringtone from scratch.
Now, I didn't want to make a ringtone that "sounded cool". That's just lame. Also, my music, like my code, is largely crap. And there are rules which have to be observed. A ringtone is a structured musical composition (no different than a sonata or a waltz or a four-piece headbanger rock anthem). It should be short. It should tend toward the higher ranges, for better sound penetration. It should be annoying and/or pleading: ANSWER!! ANSWER!! ANSWER!! YEP!! I'M STILL RINGING!! NOT GONNA STOP!! ANSWER!! It should contribute towards feelings of anxiety, rage, and/or depression. I don't buy in to the school of thought which holds that ringtones should be truncated twenty-second samples of our favorite songs ramrodded through the cheesy bifurcated audio of a $200 cell phone. Call me a purist, but to me, a ringtone should stay true to its low-fi monophonic 80's-era tinfoil synthesizer roots.
In other words, a ringtone should evoke the sound of a phone ringing annoyingly.
That decided, I sat down at the keyboard, cracked open my copy of Sonar, and got started. I chose E Minor because it's an easy key to play in, and if you play with a lot of band-type-people you'll start using E Minor as a defense mechanism against guitar players who have to fiddle and futz when you hit them with a key like D-flat. Everybody can play in E. Also, I wanted a quasi-classical "silent movie" sort of feel to the ringtone, and I think the key of E Minor tends to evoke that feel (C Minor is another good one). And I don't want any music geeks telling me that there's no qualitative difference between keys under equal temperament. All such complaints will be ignored.
Ah, one more thing. In my opinion, a ringtone should have three parts:
- Part 1. I'm ringing. Answer me.
- Part 2. Now I'm REALLY F##KING RINGING!! YOU DONE PISSED ME OFF!! ANSWER, SLAVE!! IMMEDIATELY!!
- Part 3. Okay, Mr. Irresponsible. I know you're not going to answer me. I'm going to ring for another 10 seconds anyway.
Which calls for an ABA compositional layout, which you'll hear in the audio to follow. Which I will now present for your headache-inducing enjoyment, without further ado.
Here's an embedded version of the same. I have no idea if this will play on your computer. If you're lucky, it won't. However, I don't think you're lucky. If anybody knows of a better or more standard way of embedding MP3s on a web page, I'd love to hear it.
This is my ringtone. There are many like it but this one is mine. I take great pleasure in strategically placing my cell phone on my desk in a crowded work environment, leaving the room, and dialing it repeatedly from a nearby landline. This for the benefit of the guy trying to debug a multi-threaded proprietary back-end server app a dozen feet away.
Posted by James Devlin 26 comment(s)
