Honda musical road commercial

[Greg Vincent]

This commercial has been driving me nuts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJFGacuxcSM

It's a neat idea in concept, but they completely fouled up the basic melody of the William Tell Overture (I'm not referring to the general tuning of the notes, which is OK given the circumstances).

They started on the root and went up a major third rather than starting on the fifth below the root and then bouncing up to the root note.

With that start, the melody has no chance of righting itself and actually ends in a different KEY a fourth higher than the original key. It sounds more like some mutant harmony line to the melody than the actual melody they're after.

I could understand if some high school kids had made this mistake, but a major car company??? In a nationwide ad???

It simply boggles the mind. Didn't they consult ONE musician and ask if they got the melody right?

(It would have been no harder to do the melody correctly!)

The final remarkable aspect of this spot is how pleased with themselves everyone in the ad seems to be...

OK thanks for letting me rant!

(Anyone else out there bothered by this ad?)

-GV

[Alvin Blaine]

I actually went and drove on that rode, a few times, both the first one and the new one. The original one ended up with a housing track being built near it, and the people got tiered of hearing that tune night and day that the city paved it over and moved it a little further out of town. My sister lives just a couple of miles from it there in Palmdale.

You are right the melody line is wrong, and when you drive over it in a big RV, it sound really bad. The timing is alright but it almost sounds like a minor scale because it starts on the wrong note of the scale.

[Ben Elder]

Greetings from Hollywood:

Without even looking at the link, I'd be willing to bet that any discrepancy between a car sales pitch and classical-music correctness is entirely by design and was consciously and deliberately executed by pure intention.

They did whatever they did for their own reasons. Whoever the musical director/composer was almost surely doesn't lack for musical training, education or knowledge. Judgment might be another debate.

This not an isolated incident in this town. In fact, it's probably pagan religion. You probably remember Michael J. Fox playing that big red Gibson ES-355 in "Back to the Future." That was a replacement guitar because the producers didn't like the one they almost used. They went back to Norman Harris (Norm's Rare Guitars, also supplier to "Spinal Tap" and a Rushmore figure of vintage-guitar authority) and picked the 355 because they just had to have a red guitar. Norm pointed out that their movie was set in 1955 and the 355 wasn't introduced until 1958-59. Argued vehemently against their using it. He may as well have been talking to a wall of Marshall stacks.

We want a red guitar. We want a red guitar. We want that guitar. We want that guitar. We want that guitar. We want that guitar. We want that guitar. We want that guitar. We want that guitar. We want that guitar. We want that guitar. We want that guitar. We want that guitar. We want that guitar. We want that guitar. We want that guitar.

(I have no explanation for Gary Busey playing a Fender Bronco, introduced more than a decade after Buddy Holly died.)

Whatever the objections, this was not casually or carelessly done. It seemed like a good idea to someone and many thousands were paid to have it this way. Whether your music prof likes it or not.

[Greg Vincent]

Well Ben... if that's the case, then I find it even more mind-boggling --and I've lived here in Tinsel Town for over 20 years!

Even the "guy in the street" can tell that this melody is screwed-up and something is not right (I've shown this to a number of non-musicians), which cannot be said of either of the guitar mistakes you reference --only guitar dorks would notice those errors. (And who cares about them! )

[Glenn Suchan]

This commercial has been driving me nuts: It's a neat idea in concept, but they completely fouled up the basic melody of the William Tell Overture (I'm not referring to the general tuning of the notes, which is OK given the circumstances).

They started on the root and went up a major third rather than starting on the fifth below the root and then bouncing up to the root note.

With that start, the melody has no chance of righting itself and actually ends in a different KEY a fourth higher than the original key. It sounds more like some mutant harmony line to the melody than the actual melody they're after.

I could understand if some high school kids had made this mistake, but a major car company??? In a nationwide ad???

Greg, I don't understand your point. You acknowledge the pitch and melody issues are "OK given the circumstances". Then you state "I could understand if some high school kids had made this mistake, but a major car company??? In a nationwide ad??? " Is your claim of a mistake due to the pitchy melody or the fact that Honda decided to use that unique pavement? If it's the unique pavement, I'd have to say, they really didn't have many choices. Anyway, here's a Honda commercial which I enjoy, that uses a popular song from the late 50's or early 60's:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8GpMyKN7_U

And the original by the late Miriam Makeba:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-VrfadKbco

Keep on pickin'!
Glenn

[Alvin Blaine]

Here is the video's of the making of the "Musical Road".

[Glenn Suchan]

Hmmmm, so Honda was proactive regarding creating the "pavement song". Greg, I guess you do have a valid gripe, after all. The thing I don't understand, now, is: considering grooved pavement never has been a precise means for creating melody, I see from Alvin's link, the creators were using a Peterson "V-series" strobe tuner. So, I'd have to say, there is no excuse for such a blatant disregard of melody and pitch.

Keep on pickin'!
Glenn

[Greg Vincent]

Glenn,

I acknowledged the pitch of the individual notes was OK given the circumstances; the notes are adequately-rendered members of a major scale.

My gripe is with the melody they describe.

-GV

[Bill Hatcher]

The melody is not the issue. The idea is that the listener...the general public....can tell what the song is just from the rhythm patterns. The actual pitch of the instruments is secondary to being able to hear what the song is and that the car is getting close to the melody.
Close enough is successful enough in this experiment.

[Greg Vincent]

I agree that the melody is identifiable from the rhythm of the notes.

It just seems like it would have been just as easy to base the groove-cutting project on the correct melody, as opposed to going to all that trouble just to reproduce a melody line that is incorrect.

But I guess I'm the only one who is bugged by this and thinks it reflects poorly on the product I'm supposed to want to buy.

[Andy Greatrix]

They probably changed the melody so they wouldn't have to pay royalties. I was asked to write an instrumental for a commercial one time. It had to sound like a well-known Hawaiian song, but original for that reason.

[Jim Smith]

They probably changed the melody so they wouldn't have to pay royalties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tell_Overture

Since it was composed in 1829, I doubt that royalties were the issue.

[Adam Przybyla]

An agency in Japan did basically the same thing last year, but better. It actually won a few advertising awards. It's not perfect, but at least the melody is recognizable in this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-8AMlpzNwo