When my washing machine starts up, it goes: BLUMP BLUMP, click click click click a-click click, BLUMP BLUMP, clicka clicka clicka clicka click click, and then it lapses into the usual sound of a washing machine but by then I already have Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times Bad Times” going through my head because it’s the same rhythm and the same key (Well the blumps are).
Not an appliance but when my sink starts to clog up it does a blub blub blub blub BLUB blub blub bluh… and it sounds like the music from Twilight Zone. Not the crinkly intro but the theme played in suspensieful momemts toward the end.
And my car’s windshield wipers play the Jeopardy theme.
You’re lucky. My dishwasher actually plays a tune when the cycle is complete. And don’t get me started on the washing machine–it has a little ascending phrase it plays when you power it on, another descending phrase when you pause the cycle, and what I can only describe as a 4-measure hornpipe ditty when it finishes.
Thanks to trhe magic of the Internet, I can report that the washer song is here. It sounds suspiciously like a bit of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, Clock Tower 1st Day.
Years ago there was a dot-matrix printer in my lab at work; it’s only purpose was to print shooting range timings (time of shot, time of hit, elapsed time) and set scores. I didn’t write the code for the score reporting program, but I swear whoever did went out of his/her way to make the printer perform one of the 64-beat pieces from my old college percussion method book…over and over and over again. The thing was a far better drummer than I ever was!
We have a child-proof latch that twangs. It’s only one short dissonent chord (different plastic and metal parts, and the door itself, make at least three different boings at once), but then I have to mentally sing the first verse of an obscure song.
“This Summer” by Fellow Travellers, if you must know… NEVER listen to it if you have Funyn latches.
Hmmm, not on Youtube (late 80s/early 90s), but you can hear the “latchy” piano at :28 in this sample on iTunes…
My old refrigerator had a whistle tune when the ice maker refilled with water. Sounded just like a rude catcall. I would get all up in my feels some days when I heard it.
Electronic door chimes in some stores play a descending minor third. I once heard one that had gone wonky and sort of played twice in quick succession, so quick that you heard the first note twice and then the second note twice. Now every such door chime - even the ones that aren’t broken - gives me Soul Bossa Nova by Quincy Jones. And then I have to play air trombone for an hour afterward. Wait - all trombones are air trombones. Oh well, YKWIM.
The door buzzer in my apartment also sounds like the opening of the Mission Impossible theme. Pizza time is very exciting.
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I forget to add my own, My old dishwasher (RIP) used to make three churning, pumping noises that sounded exactly like the start to “20th Century Boy” by T-Rex
The JC Pennys store I go to has tones that play when you go into the dressing area. It’s the opening horns to Goldfinger. I have to keep singing it when we go in there, until I get a look from my wife to stop.
When I manually open or close my garage door…at a certain speed…the creaking/squealing sounds exactly like the refrain of the song “you ought to be in pictures…”
Don’t know if a faucet counts as an appliance, but when I’m running water in my bathroom sink, at certain times the water makes a ringing resonance that sounds exactly like my home phone ringing faintly; just as though a normal ring was being covered by white noise. I then shut the water off and listen intently: suddenly phone rings go from 5 seconds apart, to seemingly three and half years between rings. Funny thing, half the time I think I’m hearing things, my phone really is ringing.
