The Ring Tone Musician
from the is-he-the-guy-we-beat-up? dept
Maybe it’s a sign that I’m getting old, but I simply can’t stand all the different “ringtones” people use on the mobile phones. I realize that they’re a big hit and some even see ringtones as a huge moneymaking opportunity, but they’re insanely annoying. I still don’t understand why most people can’t simply set their phones to vibrate when they’re out in public, so as not to disturb everyone else around them. Here’s an article though, about a failed rock musician who has found a new career translating popular songs into ringtones. Though, the article does point out that, eventually, they expect phones to be able to just play the actual song itself. Then people won’t know whether it’s their phone ringing or a radio playing somewhere.
Comments on “The Ring Tone Musician”
I miss 1980s megaphones
that played even more annoying tunes. Check out the end scene of “The Last Emperor” to see a tour guide with one of those.
rebuttal
1. When you actually walk places in a city, you need something louder than vibrate — hard to distinguish the vibrate of your ring from the vibration of your very soul created by passing buses, el trains, etc.
2. When you *really* want a specific ringtone and want to find a quality rendition, good luck. I swear some were created by the tone deaf.
3. Even finding a good midi rendition of a song (that Nokia PC Suite can translate into a Ringtone) is tough. You get a lot of cheesy has-been artists putting vibraphone into “Johnny B. Goode” and saxaphone in “Enter Sandman”. I’m not kidding.
Re: Noise as a weapon
Not to mention the sublime pleasures of having a cell phone on ring volume 10 when you’re in the middle of a national park, and watching the yuppies grimace.
Tonight, I had some fun mixing up sampled sounds of cell phones, fax beeps, and roaring truck engines on my PC. My neighbors got really pissed and banged on the wall. Now I need to burn a CD and take a ghetto blaster to the middle of Grand Canyon National Park, so it echoes.