Line #52 Main/MusicalGag


1	Simply put, a Musical Gag is either one of two things:
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3	* In music, a Musical Gag is a joke that comes from somewhere other than the lyrics. The joke may be in unexpected or unusual musical parts or choice of instrument.
4	* In other media, a Musical Gag is a joke within the item's music/soundtrack.
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6	The following tropes are Musical Gags of the second type:
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8	* TheDayTheMusicLied
9	* LeftTheBackgroundMusicOn
10	* LettingTheAirOutOfTheBand
11	* MusicalisInterruptus
12	** RecordNeedleScratch (in most cases)
13	* XylophoneGag (to an extent, anyway...)
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15	On occasion, the {{Leitmotif}} for a JokeCharacter will itself be this.
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17	To avoid excessive repetition, examples on this page should be of Musical Gags that don't already fit into the specific tropes above.
18	----
19	!Examples:
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21	[[foldercontrol]]
22
23	!!Type 1 -- a joke from somewhere other than the lyrics:
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25	[[folder:Comic Strips]]
26	* In ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'', Schroeder whistles [[Music/{{LudwigVanBeethoven}} Beethoven's]] F minor sonata to call Snoopy in; it is this because that would require whistling two notes at once. Later strips have Woodstock whistling similarly complex melodies.
27	[[/folder]]
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29	[[folder:Literature]]
30	* ''Literature/GodelEscherBachAnEternalGoldenBraid'' has many of these within the dialogues:
31	** In "Canon by Intervallic Augmentation," a song based on the theme (famously used in Music/JohannSebastianBach's ''Art of the Fugue'') whose notes spell out B-A-C-H is played on a different record player, which distends the intervals so that the notes instead spell C-A-G-E, as in Music/JohnCage. When a third record player plays the song, the intervals are stretched even further so that the notes of the theme spell B-C-A-H.
32	** In "...Ant Fugue," the four characters enter one by one like the voices of a fugue, each delivering the same theme at a different philosophical pitch.
33	** In "Six-Part Ricercar," the Crab adds a mordent to the theme from Music/JohannSebastianBach's ''The Musical Offering'', making its notes spell "Babbage, C(harles)" backwards.
34	[[/folder]]
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36	[[folder:Music]]
37	* Music/TomLehrer, a satirist most famous in the 1950's and 1960's, had a distinctive style involving writing and performing songs poking fun at various (then-)current events. Most of the jokes are in the lyrics, so they would not be Musical Gags -- but there was the occasional melodic joke. For example, at the end of "New Math", Lehrer quips: "Come back tomorrow night, we're gonna do... fractions." This is followed up by a quick melody on the piano which seems to translate as either "Oh, brother!" or "Just kidding!".
38	* Peter Schickele, a composer who moonlights as a musical satirist, has created a number of compact discs purporting to follow the work of "Music/PDQBach", a fictional classical composer. Every one of PDQ Bach's works is actually filled with as many Musical Gags as Schickele could fit in, be it including the melody of "Pop Goes the Weasel" or an OverlyLongGag consisting of going up and down the 5-note scale and adding in increasingly nonsensical instruments. Much to his dismay, these musical parodies have become so popular that they have eclipsed his serious work.
39	* "Faerie's Aire And Death Waltz" by John Stump; aside from the nonsensical stage directions like "adagio cantabile with a rock tempo feel", "tune the uke", "Rigatoni", "cresc. or not", and "play ball!", even a layperson looking at the score should be easily able to tell that it's intentionally unplayable.
40	* [[FilkSong Filk Songs]], in addition to the silly lyrics, will often include gags.
41	* Mozart himself wrote a piece entitled ''A Musical Joke''. There are a few wrong notes, but most of the joke is how the piece fails to develop (as if it were written by someone who was out of ideas).
42	* Camille Saint-Saens included a number of musical gags in ''The Carnival of the Animals''. For example, movement twelve, "Fossils", includes quotes from ''Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'' and the French nursery rhyme ''Au Clair de la Lune'', among other musical "fossils".
43	* The Music/LedZeppelin song "The Crunge" consists entirely of this trope. It is written to sound like James Brown style {{funk}}, which is written to be danced to, but there are so many changes in the time signature that any attempt to actually dance to it would result in a faceplant.
44	* Music/CledusTJudd, being a CountryMusic parodist, does this frequently:
45	** He coughs during the last chorus of "If Shania Was Mine" (Music/ShaniaTwain's "Any Man of Mine") and asks of the backing vocals, "Now was that [[Music/RobertJohnMuttLange Mutt Lange]] or Music/DwightYoakam?" In the video, David Ball butts in with "At least he's not pickin' on me this time."
46	** "Jackson (Alan That Is)" interpolates Music/JohnnyCash's "Jackson", the source of the parody, with Music/AlanJackson's "Chattahoochee".
47	** He likes to make the musical instruments miss notes on purpose, such as the piano riffs in "Every Light in the House Is Blown" ("Every Light in the House" by Music/TraceAdkins) and "Coronary Life" ("Ordinary Life" by Chad Brock), and the deliberately off-key guitar solo in "Breath" ("Breathe" by Music/FaithHill).
48	** The piano/fiddle riff on "Just Another Day in Parodies" ("Just Another Day in Paradise" by Phil Vassar) plays a descending scale at the end instead of the right notes.
49	** "What the [=*$@#=] Did You Say" (Music/MartinaMcBride's "Whatever You Say") uses a tuba in the second verse, an instrument blatantly not present in the original song.
50	** The guitar riff at the beginning of "My Cellmate Thinks I'm Sexy" (Music/KennyChesney's "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy") interpolates the "William Tell Overture".
51	** "I Was Country When Country Wasn't Pop" (Music/BarbaraMandrell and Music/GeorgeJones' "I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool") randomly throws in pop and rap elements.
52	** After the TruckDriversGearChange on "Bake Me a Country Ham" ("Paint Me a Birmingham" by Music/TracyLawrence), Cledus raises the pitch on his voice to make him sound even more like Tracy Lawrence.
53	* Music/WeirdAlYankovic, in "Smells Like Nirvana" ("Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Music/{{Nirvana}}), gargles water to the beginning of the guitar solo, then has a tuba play the rest of it.
54	* In Music/JohannSebastianBach's BattleOfTheBands {{cantata}} "The Contest Between Phoebus and Pan" (BWV 201), the violins during Midas's aria proclaiming Pan as master do donkey imitations, foreshadowing Midas's KarmicTransformation.
55	* The song "Circles" on ''Music/StrongBadSingsAndOtherTypeHits'' has a guitarist and a harmonica player squabbling between the vocal parts. The harmonica is noticeably out of tune, and at the end, the guitarist [[StudioChatter laughs and asks, "is this song really in G?"]]
56	* Music/InsaneClownPosse often put in a skit at the end of a song that shows their signature style of humor, whether it be young white kids trying to pretend that they're gangbangers, [[DeepSouth calling up a redneck to talk to "big fat fuckin' redneck chicken boy"]], or a drive-thru order for "the dog beats".
57	[[/folder]]
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59	[[folder:Radio]]
60	* ''Radio/HelloCheeky'' would have one or two humorous songs in each episode. One of them, ''I've Fallen For A Girl Called Agnes'', is entirely about the fact that ''[[LeastRhymableWord nothing]]'' [[LeastRhymableWord rhymes with Agnes]], and the rhythm of the song keeps changing in reference to the fact that the singer never finishes a verse.
61	[[/folder]]
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63	[[folder:Theater]]
64	* ''Chee-Chee'', a famous musical flop by Rodgers and Hart based on the novel ''The Son of the Grand Eunuch'', has a final scene where the main character is being taken away to have the relevant operation. The orchestra plays a few bars from ''The Nutcracker Suite''.
65	* In one of Richard Rodgers' later works, the ballet "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue," three cops on a raid enter to the tune of "Three Blind Mice."
66	* In ''Theatre/OfTheeISing'', the French soldiers enter to the first few bars of "An American in Paris" (which, like the musical, was composed by Music/GeorgeGershwin).
67	* In ''Theatre/TheMikado'', when the Mikado's song mentions "Bach, interwoven/With Spohr and Beethoven" as a punishment for the music hall singer, woodwinds play the theme from Music/JohannSebastianBach's Fugue in G minor (BWV 542).
68	* In ''Theatre/ShowBoat'', the second verse of "Why Do I Love You?" has Ravenal singing "I'll come home as early as I can" to the portion of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" whose original lyrics were "He can come home as late as can be."
69	* Near the end of "A Weekend in the Country" from ''Theatre/ALittleNightMusic'', the orchestra quotes the opening bars of Richard Strauss's ''Theatre/DerRosenkavalier'', another musical sex comedy about the IdleRich.
70	[[/folder]]
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72	!!Type 2 -- a joke within the item's music/soundtrack:
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74	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
75	* In ''Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya'', the FiveManBand calls itself the "SOS Brigade". One of the [[ImageSong image songs]]' beat is the Morse Code for "SOS".
76	[[/folder]]
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78	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
79	* In ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'', the [[OverlyLongGag pan across the Spaceballs' ship]] is made even funnier by the orchestra repeatedly trying to segue into the next part of the music only to find out that there's more of the ship to get past first.
80	* In the movie ''Film/DownWithLove'', a character claims that something doesn't ring a bell. The soundtrack contradicts him.
81	* ''Film/LooneyTunesBackInAction'': When Brendan Fraser's character opens the garage to reveal his [=AMC=] Gremlin, the score plays a snippet of the ''Film/{{Gremlins}}'' theme.
82	[[/folder]]
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84	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
85	* Much of the SourceMusic chosen for ''Series/{{Lost}}'' was recorded by artists who died in plane crashes.
86	[[/folder]]
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88	[[folder:Pinballs]]
89	* The main soundtrack for ''Pinball/TwilightZone'' is an instrumental version of the 1982 song "Twilight Zone", by Music/GoldenEarring.
90	* Similarly, ''Pinball/MaryShelleysFrankenstein'' features Edgar Winter's rock instrumental, "Frankenstein", as a selectable song.
91	* In ''Pinball/MonsterBash'', the mode "Ball & Chain" is accompanied by a rock version of [[LohengrinAndMendelssohn Wagner's "Bridal Chorus"]].
92	[[/folder]]
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94	[[folder:Radio]]
95	* One that requires some explanation: ''Radio/HamishAndDougal'' was a show spun off from ''Radio/ImSorryIHaventAClue'', featuring two of ''Clue's'' regulars. In one episode, the rest of ''Clue's'' cast join ''Hamish And Dougal'' as guest stars. After they've all been introduced, we hear a brief burst of ''Clue's'' theme tune, ''The Shickel Shamble''.
96	** Also, since ''Clue'' has a local pianist in the form of Colin Sell, he sometimes joins in on the joke-cracking. As one round of ''Just A Minim'' collapsed into shambles, he could be heard playing ''Enter The Gladiators'' (circus music), and you can sometimes hear him pausing as he's thrown off by one of the panellists or has to adjust his tempo.
97	** When Neil Innes was the pianist, Humph listed his acomplishments (Music/TheRutles, Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, etc), concluding "All of which has brought him to where he is today. Standing in for Colin Sell." Neil instantly played the funeral march.
98	[[/folder]]
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100	[[folder:Video Games]]
101	* In ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga,'' there's an optional boss fight with the Demi-Fiend, the protagonist of ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIIINocturne''. This is the hardest fight in the game, requiring a very specific strategy, lots of grinding, and a generous helping of luck to win. The music that plays during the fight? Nocturne's regular battle theme. To him, you're just another random encounter.
102	* ''Franchise/{{Kirby}}'':
103	** Starting in ''VideoGame/KirbysReturnToDreamLand'', certain areas with no music will instead have hidden melodies snuck into the ambient sound effects. In ''VideoGame/KirbyStarAllies'' in particular, if you wait long enough before the fight with Meta Knight, he'll start quietly whistling his own {{leitmotif}}.
104	** "Studying the Power Plant" in ''VideoGame/KirbyPlanetRobobot'' uses electric guitar feedback to evoke the sound of high voltage in a power plant. Specifically, it was an electric guitar with the composer's reading glasses stuck in between the strings. Which caused them to break.
105	** In ''Kirby: Planet Robobot'', you fight a clone of King Dedede, who eventually splits into [[MesACrowd three copies]]. The song that plays in the second phase of the fight, "Dedede's Tridimensional Cannon", is an arrangement of King Dedede's theme in 3/4 (in other words, triple time).
106	* In a mission late in ''VideoGame/MafiaIII''s storyline - [[spoiler:infiltrating the Frisco Fields party to hunt down Olivia Marcano]] - Lincoln is instructed by Donavan, while posing as a waiter, to dose the wine being served with ''"military-grade LSD"''. By the time he returns to the party after ducking back into the kitchens for a smoke break, the entire group of assembled guests are hallucinating on the floor or dancing. With the speech that had punctuated the party while they were all sober now gone, the scene is instead accompanied by a piano. One which is playing ''White Rabbit'' by Jefferson Airplane.
107	* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'', the first howl you'll hear in the ambient track of wolf sounds that plays in the dog-focused passages of the game 'howls' the first two notes of the game's operatic {{Leitmotif}}, "The Best Is Yet To Come".
108	* In ''VideoGame/HollowKnight'', the ''Godmaster'' DLC brings us [[spoiler:[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFRleTfv1tk Truth, Beauty and Hatred feat. Zote]], which plays during the [[OptionalBoss Eternal Ordeal]]. It's just a remix of Truth, Beauty and Hatred (the theme of Grey Prince Zote), but with Zote's rough, scratchy voice singing over it.]] And if ''that'' wasn't enough, [[spoiler:killing [[ArcNumber 57]] Zotes within the Eternal Ordeal unlocks a custom title screen, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2INO6ygetos with Zote (poorly) singing to the title theme.]]]]
109	* In ''VideoGame/{{GOHOME}}'', [[HellHound Clodia's]] chase theme is a remix of Csikós Post, only with dog barks.
110	[[/folder]]
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112	[[folder:Web Original]]
113	* WebSite/SFDebris often uses musical bits of various lengths and styles to emphasize ridiculous elements in the works he reviews, to deliver subtle (or less-than-subtle) puns, and so forth. He also often interjects with short comedic songs (with or without music), usually to make a point absolutely clear.
114	[[/folder]]
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116	[[folder:Web Video]]
117	* ''WebVideo/DragonBallZAbridged:'' When Krillin is deciding whether or not to kill 18, the theme for Lapis Lazuli from ''Steven Universe'' plays. As the episode breakdown confirms, this was an oblique joke about how Akira Toriyama stated 17 and 18's real names were Lapis and Lazuli.
118	[[/folder]]
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120	[[folder:Western Animation]]
121	* In the ''WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain'' episode "It's Only A Paper World," the title characters attempt to TakeOverTheWorld by building a life-sized replica of the planet Earth out of paper-mâché and luring the population onto it so they can rule the real Earth without interference. All the music in the episode is based on themes from Dvorak's New World symphony.
122	* ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' associates most major characters with specific instruments. Peridot's is a triangle wave, and she has [[AnimeHair triangular hair]]. Ruby's is a square wave, as she has a cubic afro.
123	[[/folder]]
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125	!!Other Examples:
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127	[[folder:Video Games]]
128	* On the original ''VideoGame/SkiesOfArcadia'' Dreamcast discs, if you inserted one in a CD player, instead of the standard "Insert Dreamcast discs into your Dreamcast not your CD player" message, one of three randomly selected custom messages to this effect issued by the voice actors for Vyse, Aika, and Fina would play.
129	* In ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight'', Alucard would inform you that this disc only has game data. It would then play some music before going into the game data and being [[HellIsThatNoise annoying static]].
130	-->"Track one contains computer data, so please don't play it. But you probably won't listen to me anyway, will you?" * cue music with {{Evil Laugh}}s*
131	[[/folder]]
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133	[[folder:Web Comics]]
134	* [[http://xkcd.com/389/ This]] Webcomic/{{xkcd}} strip. For those who can't read music, [[http://blag.xkcd.com/2008/02/27/keeping-time/comment-page-2/ here]]'s the spoiler.
135	[[/folder]]

Context Main / MusicalGag