Day Twenty Seven

If music be the food of love, I’d rather starve.

I wittered on the other day about music.  With very few exceptions, I don’t like it.

However, despite my eccentric proclivities, or perhaps because of them, I wanted to know more about musical roads.

I cannot imagine the torture of living near a road which hums, drones and vibrates every few minutes - nay, seconds, as cars drive past.  Purgatory has just been re-mastered.

This phenomenon isn’t new. As far back as 1995, Denmark had a tuneful road, the Ashphaltophone installed in Gylling, Østjylland.

It was meant as an art work by sculptors Steen Krarup Jensen and Jakob Freud-Magnus.

 

The Hokkaido Institute of Research in Japan installed their 'Melody Road’ in 2007 based on a serendipitous discovery by Shizuo Shinoda who accidentally  made grooves in the road with his bulldozer, then driving over them, discovered they sounded like notes.  Japan now has several Melody Roads.

There are musical roads in many parts of the world including the Netherlands, South Korea, Indonesia and the United States.

The Honda Civic Musical Road was built in 2008 by Lancaster County, California and was supposed to play the lively William Tell overture. Unfortunately, it was incorrectly engineered and sounded more like a requiem, not a good look, or sound, for a highway.

Residents complained and it was covered over.  Another set of residents then objected to the cover-up,  so a new road was installed some 2 miles away from any houses.  

Sadly, in an epic fail, this too used the same faulty blueprint so William Tell still sounds as if he needed a tune-up.   

Here's a short (3 minutes) documentary by Tom Scott of ‘Amazing Places’ who takes you down Lancaster County's road, giving an explanation of why it went wrong (twice) and became the highway of hell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef93WmlEho0

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This is how a road should sound - what am I saying ??? 😊😃😃 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWHIJa_4VeY

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And a mere 51 seconds of another tuneful Japanese musical road.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_xvfZUqAtg

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How spooky, if you're driving at night and don't know the musical road is coming up!  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrptmOJyHac

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