Grant Barrett said:

Ever notice how you can sing the lyrics of "Amazing Grace" to the theme from "Gilligan's Island"—or for that matter, to "The House of the Rising Sun"? Turns out there are many more examples of this. Is there a word for this musical phenomenon? (Did you know Garrison Keillor can sing "Amazing Grace" to theme song of The Mickey Mouse Club.)

Peter Schickele, creator of PDQ Bach and erstwhile host of "Schickele Mix", could sing Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" to the tune of the tango classic "Hernando's Hideaway".

sing one song to the tune of another – I don't know if there is a word for exactly that, but it is based on meter, that is, the number of syllables in each line. For example, Amazing Grace is 8.6.8.6., also known as Common Meter. You can read the Wiki article at .

Post edited 1:29PM – Mar-15-10 by johng423

punctuation – The first piece in PDQ Bach's A Consort of Choral Christmas Carols uses the now-you-hear-it-now-you-don't punctuation for effect throughout. The music emphasizes the contrast between such lines in each verse.
http://www.schickele.com/compo…..istmas.htm

Thank you to Professor Peter Schickele for his hard work in "discovering" or uncovering the works of this deservedly unknown (LOL) composer.

They're also meter-equivalent to the Marine Corps Hymn, to my father's never-ending annoyance.

Has anyone yet suggested the term "mashup" for these combinations of one song's words with another's tune? I know the term covers a lot more ground than that (Weird Al Yankovic's song "eBay" to the tune of the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way", expertly blended with the Four Tops' "Baby I Need Your Loving", for example), but surely it's a subset of that kind of thing.

To change the subject to another item on this show, the "chicka wow wow" phrase is one of the more comment-inspiring parts of a viral video called "kittens inspired by kittens", in which a 5-year-old girl provides captions for pictures found in a book about kittens.

Perhaps "transpo-tunes" or "modular music"? Dare we go to "thesauritonic"? Ugh! Sounds like Titanic's ugly sister…

Post edited 10:17AM – Mar-16-10 by Glenn

johng423 said:

sing one song to the tune of another – I don't know if there is a word for exactly that, but it is based on meter, that is, the number of syllables in each line. For example, Amazing Grace is 8.6.8.6., also known as Common Meter. You can read the Wiki article at .

I think the official name of this is Metric(al) Equivalence, and the songs are called Metric(al) Equivalents. Several (older?) hymnbooks have indices in the back. One of those indices might be A Metric Index of Tunes. Such an index is provided to allow precisely for this substitution of tunes with lyrics. There are countless possibilities within most hymnbooks. I find that using unfamiliar words with familiar hymn tunes works best for congregational singing. For solo work, the reverse is true.

But I like to call them "toodatunas," or "tunas" for short.

[edit: added the following]
In looking at a metric list of hymns in one hymnbook, just this morning I discovered the following "tuna:"
Amazing Grace (Common Meter 86.86)
America the Beautiful (Common Meter Double 86.86.86.86)

So you can sing the words to Amazing Grace to the tune of America the Beautiful, fitting two verses of lyrics into a single verse of music. It works quite well, since the lyric verses run closely together into a single narrative.

I was too scared to try Gilligan's Island to the tune of America the Beautiful

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear.
And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear
The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
'Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me.
His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

When we've been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun.
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we've first begun.

Post edited 12:53PM – Mar-16-10 by Glenn

Grant Barrett said:

When it comes to joining Facebook affinity groups, grammar lovers have lots of choices. Take, for example, the group whose motto is "Punctuation saves lives." It's called "Let's Eat Grandma!'" or "Let's eat, Grandma!"

I have a nominee for the "Let's eat Grandma" award for copy editing. Please refer to the online version of what, in print version, appears on the front page with headline type font. It is an article intending to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Bull Market's return to Wall Street but, in the end — the wrong end — coming out with a very different message:

Happy Birthday Bull! (click for article)

I have been playing with music for years and I have always used the word interpolation. When I play a "cover" song I follow the theatrical rule that says you can't change or add a word, but you can do anything else. Interpolation may have the larger meaning of simply changing a piece of music, but I can't pass up the scat-tastic warmth of in-ter-po-la-tion.

clipping one's nails (a sensitive individual at work once complained that she could hear me whenever I treated a hangnail, and filed a complaint

How was the complaint resolved?

Emmett

I’d like to weigh in on the question of substituting lyrics.

First, I’d vote against homometer. The musical term “meter” is not equivalent to the poetic term. In poetry, of course, meter refers to the number of feet in a line, based on patterns of emphasis (a-MA-zing GRACE how SWEET the SOUND that SAVED a WRETCH like ME=7 iambic feet). While meter in music was used in this way for hymns, (as mentioned in the term “common meter” above), the musical term meter refers much more specifically to how many beats there are in a bar.

To keep it simple, “Amazing Grace” is in 3. This means you can count to three in equal spaces over and over until the song is over. “Amazing Grace” begins with 3 and continues from there. The emphasis is always on beat 1. Each is evenly spaced (despite how it looks here):

a- MA- zing GRACE how SWEET the SOUND that SAVED a WRETCH like ME
3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3

“Gilligan’s Island,” on the other hand is in 4:
Just SIT right down and HEAR a tale a TALE of a fate-ful TRIP
4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1

When you sing “Amazing Grace” to “Gilligan’s Island” you are actually changing the meter, both musical and poetic. Think about what syllables are emphasized when you do it to "Gilligan's Island":

a- MA- zing grace how SWEET the sound that SAVED a wretch like Me

This is why it’s funny. You’re singing a plodding, stately hymn to the rhythm of a sea chantey. In sum, they don’t really share a meter. They share a common phrase structure.

Second, I’d like to second Grant’s choice of “contrafactum” with a little explanation. The Latin “contrafactum” (pl. contrafacta) was used, just as Grant explained, in Medieval music to indicate that it was the same song with new words, often switching back and forth between Latin and French, sacred and secular. It was a fun game to take a text about the Virgin Mary and write new words to that well-known song about a beautiful, sexy girl.

The term has been applied more generally recently, however. In jazz, for example, musicians often have taken existing songs and written new tunes to the same chords, to avoid copyright. There are hundreds of jazz songs written over the chords of Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm.” One example is Duke Ellington’s “Cottontail.” For all of these contrafacts, you can sing “I Got Rhythm” alongside the new tune and it fits perfectly. We refer to these by the Anglicized term “contrafact.” Today, contrafact means a song which is based on major structural features of another song (the tune, the chords), and there are many different types of contrafacts. “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” is a contrafact, and so is the “Amazing Grace” example.

Post edited 11:17PM – Mar-24-10 by vikkipreston

Tim G said:

On the topic of "nails on a chalkboard" I have heard two very close sayings that are synonymous to this. 1) a shovel on concrete and 2) shovel scrapping concrete. Both are used exactly the same way, mainly by people about 25 – 35, though it is not as common as nails on a chalkboard. I have heard it in Orange County, LA and in San Diego, with Orange County being the most frequent. This may be the result of nearly continous construction noise of our urban sprawl.

My vote for the most annoying modern version of the "nails on the chalkboard" is the high pitched "BEEP, BEEP, BEEP" of any large vehicle backing up. I hate it!