A World of Earcons

Being temporarily illiterate seems to have heightened my other senses. Here in Japan for the holidays, I'm noticing a world of user-interface sounds. Jim Reekes, whose old 35mm camera shutter you still hear when you take a screenshot on a Mac, calls these sounds earcons — audible icons.

Many of the train stations in Tokyo have their own theme songs, played on bell-like synthesizer sounds. (FM, perhaps?) I'm not sure if they relate to the actual location, but they do let you know you've arrived. Wouldn't composing that series have been a cool gig?

The water filter in our kitchen plays "Eidelweiss" when engaged. I guessed that was designed to suggest alpine purity, but was told that lots of devices in Japan belt out the tune. It's hard to imagine that the manufacturers have all paid licensing fees. I swear that Nintendo Wii commercials here are playing the initial sound from the "Intel Inside" theme.

Major chords are popular. Our inline water heater plays an ascending arpeggio (again on a synthetic bell sound) when turned on and a descending one when turned off.

But minor themes are everywhere as well. One of my favorites is the song of the roving yam sellers, a loop singing, "Baked yams, stone-baked yams, bay-aked yaa-aams...." You can hear an example at the end of the podcast I made last year, "Desktop Music in Japan." These play back from tiny white pickup trucks with smoldering potato ovens in the back. Other service trucks have their themes too.

The sounds I hate, though, are the blaring politicians, who prowl normally quiet neighborhoods in hyper-amplified vans and buses, bellowing, "Vote for me!" I guess that's a universal thing....

UPDATE: Reader Sam Peterson, who said his wife loved one of the Tokyo train themes so much that she made it her ringtone, pointed me to a page of MIDI train themes. Here's an even bigger collection I found with MP3 versions.