Catchy tune

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A catchy tune is the slang term for a catchy, easily memorable piece of music that the listener will remember for a longer period of time and that has a high acoustic recognition and reproduction value. The Duden defines catchy tunes as "song, hit, hit that is very catchy, memorable", derived from the insects of the same name , which, according to popular belief, "like to crawl into ears".

Use of terms

The use of "catchy tune" for a melody, a "successful hit, because it bores into the ear and is difficult to drive away from it", goes back to the German operetta composer Paul Lincke (1866–1946).

This term was adopted as the loan word earworm in English. Other terms commonly used in English are sticky music or head music .

Memory research

Disruptive catchy tunes that cannot be "switched off" or only with great difficulty are the subject of memory research . It was found that the likelihood of “switching on” (recalling and fixing) an earwig is greatest when the working memory is underutilized, for example during routine work, driving a car or going for a walk. Earwigs can then occupy free capacities of working memory and get stuck there. Conversely, catchy tunes can best be banished from working memory through increased other requirements, such as puzzles (such as Sudoku ) or an exciting book. Interestingly, this "expulsion" of the catchy tune does not succeed or is less effective if the other requirement is too high. If the puzzle is too difficult, the working memory is not used successfully and the catchy tune keeps its space there.

Another possibility of “driving out” a catchy tune from working memory consists in activating motor programs of the organs involved in speaking ( articulation ). It has been shown here that simply chewing gum can activate these motor programs sufficiently to drive off earwigs. This means that the working memory does not have to be challenged with linguistic or visual content. The purely mechanical, content-free activation of the speech organs - when chewing chewing gum - is sufficient.

requirements

Catchy tunes can come from all genres of the music world. The musicologist and music pedagogue Hermann Rauhe sees a motif made up of just three tones, which is imprinted through constant repetition, as an essential basis for developing into a catchy tune.

However, the principle of repetition should not be overused, because this would result in short-lived smacking . An evergreen that has lasted for decades contains a surprise after repeating this motif two or three times. This could consist of a particularly exciting tone jump such as the sixth jump at Tea for Two or Strangers in the Night . According to Rauhe, the secret of success lies in the dosage of familiarity and surprise. The charisma of the interpreter is also essential when it comes to becoming an evergreen. Of particular importance for the catchy tune are the hookline and the reef . The hookline is a catchy and catchy text and / or music passage within a piece of music, which increases its recognition value enormously and enables its reproducibility from memory. The riff, often started in the intro and often repeated during the piece, is a concise instrumental sound figure whose distinctive tone sequence also ensures a high recognition value.

Distinctive passages

Musicologist Jan Hemming is of the opinion that a catchy tune emerges unconsciously and involuntarily from memory, but is particularly subjective in nature and often differs from listener to listener. Earwigs are an emotional matter and occur especially with pieces of music that are either very positive or very negative. Whole titles would not become catchy tunes, but rather striking passages bored into the unconscious that by no means overwhelmed the listener's attention threshold and short-term memory. The emotional attitude is also important: if there is a strong emotional excitement when listening, the music digs deeper into the memory.

If a listener is familiar with a particular title, this increases the chances of the piece of music becoming a catchy tune. A series of tests at the Kassel Institute for Music showed that 60.5% of the pieces that became catchy tunes in the test subjects were already known to those affected. On the other hand, 24.4% of the pieces that developed into a musical "endless loop" were new to the test subjects. Apparently the text plays an important role. In the Kassel test series, three of the five catchiest titles were songs with German texts, while purely instrumental pieces only rarely achieved catchy tunes.

James Kellaris , a professor at the University of Cincinnati , showed in his studies that people have different susceptibilities to the catchy tune phenomenon , but that almost everyone has had an earwig at least once in the course of time. Women and musicians are also more prone to it than other people.

A team led by Nicolas Farrugia from the University of London has proven the connection between earwigs and neuroanatomical features. For example, in people who have earwigs particularly often, those cerebral cortex areas in the right temporal lobe that are responsible for listening to music are smaller. The smaller size may lead to an increased irritability of these neural networks .

Reception in pop music

The song catchy tune by the Wise Guys ("Because I'm in your ears and I'll never leave!", "I'm not a virtuoso, but you'll never get rid of me!", "I'm pretty penetrative, otherwise I wouldn't be so well known! ”; June 2004) and The Chicken Song by Spitting Image (with the text line“ And though you hate this song, you'll be humming it for weeks ”, April 1986; German:“ And though you If you hate this song, you'll hum it for weeks. ”) describe the phenomenon of the catchy tune, the melody of which is so catchy that you can't get rid of it, even if it doesn't suit your own taste.

The German medieval rock band Feuerschwanz also released a song in 2014 entitled Ohrwurm .

In 1982 the catchy tune was created by Fred Sonnenschein alias Frank Zander in the person of Dr. Pachulke also given a "Latin" name in the title "The Earwig". So it is called Audius Penetrantum Schleimum. In the same way, the lifetime of a catchy tune was set at one month or sometimes four weeks.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ohrwurm , duden.de, accessed on January 4, 2012
  2. ↑ a b Kurt Krüger-Lorenzen: Shot from the pistol . Vienna, Econ Verlag, 1966, p. 172.
  3. ↑ Susanne Wagner, Thomas Spillmann: Moments for the ear: man and his hearing . Rüffer & Rub Sachbuchverlag, 2004, ISBN 978-3-907625-15-6 , p. 143.
  4. ↑ How do I get rid of the catchy tune? , Frankfurter Rundschau of December 13, 2011.
  5. ↑ Ira E. Hyman, Naomi K. Burland, Hollyann M. Duskin, Megan C. Cook, Christina M. Roy, Jessie C. McGrath, Rebecca F. Roundhill: Going Gaga: Investigating, Creating, and Manipulating the Song Stuck in My Head. In: Applied Cognitive Psychology. 27, 2013, pp. 204-215, doi : 10.1002 / acp.2897 .
  6. ^ Richard Gray: Get that tune out of your head - scientists find how to get rid of earworms . In: The Daily Telegraph , March 24, 2013. Retrieved March 25, 2013. 
  7. ^ CP Beaman, K. Powell, E. Rapley: Want to block earworms from conscious awareness? B (u) y gum! In: Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006). Volume 68, number 6, 2015, pp. 1049-1057, doi : 10.1080 / 17470218.2015.1034142 , PMID 25896521 .
  8. ↑ SPIEGEL SPECIAL 12/1995 of December 1, 1995, Anatomy of the Earwig , p. 21
  9. ↑ Thüringer Zeitung of February 18, 2011, Lenas Song: Music professor examines "catchy tune" phenomenon
  10. ↑ Virtuos - The GEMA Magazine, April 2012, p. 52
  11. ↑ Scinexx Das Wissensmagazin from May 28, 2010, What makes a song a catchy tune?
  12. ↑ BBC: Kellaris on the catchy tune
  13. ↑ Nicolas Farrugia, Kelly Jakubowski, Rhodri Cusack, Lauren Stewart: Tunes stuck in your brain: The frequency and affective evaluation of involuntary musical imagery correlate with cortical structure . In: Consciousness and Cognition . tape 35 , September 1, 2015, ISSN  1053-8100 , p. 66–77 , doi : 10.1016 / j.concog.2015.04.020 ( sciencedirect.com [accessed January 18, 2020]).
  14. ^ Wiseguys, song lyrics
  15. ↑ Lyrics of The Chicken Song
  16. ↑ Lyrics "Ohrwurm" from Feuerschwanz . songtexte.com. Retrieved June 9, 2020.
  17. ↑ Track list from Feuerschwanz album "Auf's Leben" (2014) . discogs.com. Retrieved June 9, 2020.

literature

  • Engmann, Birk; Reuter, Mike: Melody perception without external stimulus. Hallucination or epilepsy? Neurology 2009 28 4: 217-221. ISSN  0722-1541
  • Sacks, Oliver: The one-armed pianist. About music and the brain. Rowohlt. Reinbek. 2008.
  • Manfred Spitzer : Music in the head: hearing, making music, understanding and experiencing in the neural network , Schattauer, 2002. ISBN 3-7945-2427-6
  • Hemming, Jan: On the phenomenology of the 'catchy tune .' In: Wolfgang Auhagen , Bullerjahn, Claudia & Höge, Holger (eds.): Music Psychology - Musical Memory and Musical Learning (pp. 184–207). Göttingen 2009: Hogrefe (= yearbook of the German Society for Music Psychology; 20).

Web links

Wiktionary: catchy tune  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations