Monday, April 05, 2010

Le Ziguezon Zinzon, Or, An Ear-Worm This Way Comes

Somebody help! I can't stop playing this song.

4 comments:

Rahul Siddharthan said...

I didn't click -- not looking for earworms right now. But, in the past, Bach has helped. I can go into my theory of this, if you like...

Space Bar said...

i like some earworms. thank you!

km said...

Rahul: Any theory on Bach is *always* welcome, particularly if it involves (simple) mathematics. So fire away!

SB: try copying and pasting the lyrics into Google Translate....hilarious.

Rahul Siddharthan said...

km - no math, but what D Hofstadter calls "strange loops". Basically, an earworm is repetitive and catchy. Bach is repetitive and catchy, so displaces the earworm. But it is not mindlessly repetitive -- there is a complex structure there, so the mind plays out the entire piece, and stops.

And even if it doesn't stop (Bach does use repeats, so one could repeat it ad infinitum), it is at least an earworm I can live with...