How about the opening chord for Thus Spake Zarathustra?
When most people hear even just the first chord they immediately identify it with the film 2001.
the guitar chord at the beginning of “a hard day’s night”
Global, your entry blows away all the others IF that only counts as “one”. HOWEVER, i dont know if Chords should count. After all it certainly is more than one “note”.
The Jaws theme music is the most recognizable, I think, and it’s certainly the shortest. 2 notes. But if you want others:
The Twilight Zone theme, while it’s pretty long in comparison, is right up there.
So is the theme from the X-Files, but it has to be done a certain way, like on the show, where it sounds like whistling. That’s seven notes.
Actually, if you’re talking about the one I’m thinking of, isn’t it 2 notes? a minor 9th apart no less (yee-ouch!), IIRC.
Jaws is the best one I’ve heard so far for fewest notes and fewest articulations. Jingle bells can be recognized by only a single not but it would take 3 articulations of said note, and that wouldn’t be the complete melody.
I think the first 2 notes of the Jaws theme could stand on their own as a complete melody, since in the movie often that’s all you get, but it isn’t really the * complete* melody without that other lower note coming in a few beats later.
The first couple of notes in the old song Heat Wave always do it for me
One thing is, it depends on if you get to pick the instrument it’s played on.
Taps perhaps?
Written by an officer (General?) during the American Civil War.
Actually, Also Sprach Zarathustra does start on a single note.
I think I can beat that, though: John Cage’s **4’33" ** for solo piano http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/cage.html has ZERO notes. Of course, I suppose it’s debatable whether you could recognize someone humming the tune.
I’ll 2nd that one…
Peace
The Moog bass tremelo (I think that’s the word) ((one long distorted bass note)) from Sunday Afternoon In The Park, by Van Halen.
OK, no one but me knows that one…
The Jaws thing or Bee Thovan’s 5th. That is also the morse for “V” (dot dot dot dash) that that little short guy in the UK used during WWI.V (WWII before US in it), yeah, Churchill when holding up 2 fingers in a “V for Victory” sign. (That really was cool, you know.)
One note - Echoes by Pink Floyd.
Ta Daa!
(two notes)
I think we need a ruling on whether or not the tune has to be recognizable if reproduced by other than the original performer / original instruments. I have doubts about the two-note recognizability of the theme from Jaws if played on, say, a piano instead of low strings; and while I’d know Echoes from a single note because of the sonar echo sound, you couldn’t play that single note on a marimba or a piccolo and expect anyone (even Pink Floyd fans) to say “Oh, that’s Pink Floyd’s Echoes!”
Ch-ch-ch-Chia!
(Chia-Pet commercial just played…)
That’s the Colonel Bogey March, written by Lieut. F.J. Ricketts in 1914. Although I’certainly give a song called “Colonel Boogie March” a listen-to…
The first two notes of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody #2, widely known from Warner Brothers cartoons. A very short C sharp, followed by a held C sharp.
Yes, it was – but ever since the New York Stock Exchange stopped pricing shares in eighths of a dollar, nobody knows what a “bit” is anymore.
Arrrgh! Pieces of eight!