“All COWS Eat Grass” was the official answer we were supposed to give on tests. But in eighth grade our music teacher joked about “All Cars Eat Gas.” Being the rebellious 8th graders that we were, that stuck. So I ran them together to make a joke. (It’s not Rocket Surgery! “Rocket Science” + “Brain Surgery”)
Thanks for the explanation.
But now I’m left wondering why they didn’t just name the lines A, B, C or 1, 2, 3 so you wouldn’t have to recite a silly phrase in your head to figure them out. Maybe it’s some relation to why a typewriter keyboard isn’t in alphabetical order I suppose.
You really don’t need a phrase. Like I said, I never learned the mnemonic when I learned music. If you know where middle C (or any note) is on the clef, you know what the rest of the notes are. Here’s Middle C on the treble clef. It’s one line below the staff, so you draw it with a line through it. Then the space up below the line is D. Then the first line is E. Then then space up is F. Then the second line is G. Then the second space is A. Then the the third line is B. Then the third space is C, and so on.
Or see this image. To me, it looks pretty logical and doesn’t at all require mnemonics, unless you’re learning it for a pop quiz the next day. Even then, as long as you know where ONE of the notes are, you can figure out the rest, so far as you know the notes are A-B-C-D-E-F-G and cycle back to A.
Now why they are where they are on their respective clefs has to do with an instrument’s range and the readability of the score. We’ve decided on notating music using staffs with five lines on it, but not all instruments natural ranges fit comfortable into a particular clef, so we have different clefs for different instrument ranges (the main ones used today are the treble clef and bass clef, but you can also see the alto and tenor clef in orchestral music for certain instruments [viola being the most common, but also stuff like the bassoon when a part sticks in the higher registers of the instrument.]"
But we’re not alone. There’s a reason singers, whether professional or amateur, spend a lot of time rehearsing.
Regarding the OP, there definitely is a trend that I’ve noticed of people choosing to sing Happy Birthday badly and it appears to be borne out of an anxiety that if they sing it sincerely and hit a wrong note, that would be more embarrassing than to purposefully sing the whole thing badly.
For me, it’s because it seems kind of pretentious if I sing it note - perfect. I’m old enough to have done it every which way, and if I sing it perfectly, I’m the only one and it gets me weird looks, as if I’m trying too hard., So I have a choice of singing it a bit flat, or doing it as a harmony with a wink to those flipping their heads my way. I alternate between those, depending on my mood. Same with Christmas carols.
As a PS, my 6 y.o. picked out “Happy Birthday” perfectly on piano just based off of my singing a year or so ago, so it can’t be that difficult.
An “aside” here: my first look at the title of this thread, before reading the OP and onward, had me misinterpreting it in the light of a strange tale lately read on another board. This told of a lady who harboured a most extreme loathing of the song “Happy Birthday” – it developed into a tangled saga of a family-and-friends birthday celebration for an elderly relative, and a sequence of misunderstandings at same. The “Happy Birthday”-hater removed herself from the room when the others were about to sing the detested ditty; but there was some kind of hitch, and when the hater came back in: the lady who was leading the singing, was recommencing “Happy Birthday” after a pause which had occurred for some reason. Ms. Hater was so incensed at this, that she punched the singing-leader in the back of the head, rather hard: upset, and storming out of the party and the house, ensued.
The general sentiment of posters following on from this story was, “this woman needs help”; but my first reading of the title here, brought to mind the tale just recounted: my thoughts were, “Heavens – is that degree of immense detestation of ‘Happy Birthday’ quite widespread – to the point of the OP’s wondering what’s up with a situation of people often being prevented from singing ‘HB’, by physical violence or the threat of it?”
(By the way, I’m tone-deaf or all but; and am quite sure that I completely murder “Happy Birthday” when trying to sing it.)
I don’t think it’s singing ability per se, it’s just perceived by many as being lame to sing in a group, and they have to show that they are not 100% into it.
As well as muttering through parts they will slouch their shoulders, maybe fold arms etc.
Personally I try to make an effort with social things like this. I can’t sing for shit, but I can make it through HBTY.
Hey, thanks for the lesson. I had 8 years of music class in elementary school (most of which was just group singing) and learned a bunch of random facts, but nothing was ever pulled together like this before.
I don’t either. I don’t think I am the worst singer in the world but I am not very good and I have never understood anything about octaves and notes. I can sort of match other people which is what I think most people try to do. It sounds fine to me as long as people sing in some sort of harmony.
I can’t even understand the concept. How are a group of people consisting of everyone from little kids to 50 year old men supposed to sing Happy Birthday other than just try to match their tune the best way they can?
I have perfect pitch and as the character Monk used to say ‘it’s a blessing…and a curse’. The curse is that one always knows when something or someone is out of tune, and where Happy Birthday is concerned that generally means ALWAYS! Yes, listening to off-pitch singing is a bit like nails on the chalkboard, but at this point in my life I am fairly convinced that a comfortable majority of people on this planet are simply unable to modulate their voices much more than to make it go generally up or generally down. I really don’t think folks are trying to sound bad, they just are. Approximating a particular key is asking too much. Then again, I suspect the Vijay Singh’s of the world painfully roll their eyes when they’re subjected to watching someone like me who golfs maybe once every decade get a quintuple bogey on the first hole.
Why the assumption of malice just because people don’t your particular talents and interests?
For some reason, the ability to see “level” runs in my family. A number of us have a freakish ability to tell if something is off by millimeters. I drive the contractors nuts, even with their laser levels. But I can’t imagine blaming people who don’t have those particular genes.
Then you are not doing it right. You have to roll your eyes at these helpless primates and then go complain about them on a message board dedicated to fighting ignorance.
TokyoBayer, as I said in post #60 above, I acknowledge that it may be snotty on my part to make such an assumption – essentially taking the position “you folks can’t possibly be collectively that bad unless you’re doing it on purpose” – but as the above two quoted posts from Elemenopy and Inner Stickler indicate, it’s not an entirely insupportable notion: adults are apparently embarrassed to sing it correctly or else potentially embarrased if they make a real attempt and don’t sound like a professional singer or something and therefore go at it deliberately half-assed.
Because it could get you killed! Ziegfeld Follies composer Dave Stamper never learned the traditional notes, and wrote all his songs as numbers. From his Wikipedia article:
During his first trip to London, [Stamper’s lyricist Gene] Buck befriended a man who turned out to be a German spy.[21] Two results of this event were fellow passenger Eddie Rickenbacker deciding to enlist to fly, and Dave Stamper having to prove to British police and a Judge that his pages covered with numbers were sheet music rather than a code.[22]
He played the numbers on a piano. If he had failed, he would have been hanged as a spy.
I promise you that I try to sing the best that I can especially for Happy Birthday. I am just not very good at it. I can sort of match some singers on the radio that have my same voice range (George Strait for example) but things fall part quickly when I try to do it solo.
It is the same thing as asking someone to draw a face accurately. Some people find it very easy and other people couldn’t do it if their life depended on it. I fall into the latter category for that talent as well.
That is why we have many different types of talents. I can do lots of things that are almost impossible to teach most other people. Singing and drawing just don’t happen to be among those. I really wish that I could sing well because it would be fun but I can’t and never will be able to. I don’t think most people are being deliberately bad at things like singing. They just literally just don’t have the ability to do it. I don’t understand the first thing about music theory even though it has been described to me many times. It wouldn’t even matter if I did understand it though. I wouldn’t be able to translate it into an actual skill.
Oh, sure you could easily sing a fifth (assuming you have any pitch control at all).
A “fifth” is just an interval of five steps in a scale. So if you are in C Major, the scale is:
C (do)
D (re)
E (mi)
F (fa)
G (so)
A (la)
B (ti)
C (do)
A fifth is (for example) from C to G*. Beginning music students can identify/sing a fifth by remembering how the song “Oh Christmas Tree, oh Christmas tree, how lovely art thou branches” starts. The “Oh Cris” is a fifth.
Similarly, it’s easy for beginners to identify a fourth - “The farmer in the dell” starts with a fourth.
*But it isn’t the only fifth. D to A is a fifth, E to B is a fifth, and so on.
ETA - Darn it, I only saw page 1 and didn’t realize this was now a 2-page thread and OF COURSE it has been explained already. I was surprised that no one had explained it yet. I did try to read through the thread before answering, honest. I just did it badly.
[please avert eyes if you don’t want to read details about music]
Well, just to be completist, F to C, G to D, A to E, but not B to F–at least that’s not the same type of fifth we’re talking about. B to F is a diminished fifth, or an augmented fourth. Both are also known as a tritone (the devil’s interval, or diabolus in musica (the devil in music.)
[/music nerdiness]
Like I said above, I know music theory, I can play several instruments, I pick out tunes by ear, but I can’t sing for shit. I try to sing properly when I sing “Happy Birthday,” as well. I can “hear” the right notes in my head quite easily, but I. Just. Can’t. Sing. Them. Accurately. One of the problems is that even in isolation, I can’t sing it without me portamentoing (sliding) around the place to find the right notes. Second, for whatever reason, I just can’t hear myself sing well. I’ve recorded myself singing, thinking everything sounded great and on-tune, and then listened to the results, which were terrible. I can “hear” the right notes in my head quite easily, but I. Just. Can’t. Sing. Them. Accurately. I have many other musical skills. Singing is not one of them. I don’t understand why this is so difficult for the OP to understand.
