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.
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This is how a road should sound - what am I saying ??? 😊😃😃
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And a mere 51 seconds of another tuneful Japanese musical road.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_xvfZUqAtg
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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrptmOJyHac
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