A look at words in Morse code (audible and visual) that have been incorporated into songs, games, etc. Featuring Rush, Beethoven, Dream SMP and others!
Inspector Morse
https://www.amazon.com/Inspector-Morse-Remorseful-Rest-Peace/dp/B00004YAAT/
Morse key by Hp.Baumeler
License Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Morsetaste.jpg
Morse code in musical notation
https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2022/02/25/morse-code-in-musical-notation
Rush – the making of YYZ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ht8_3WYWzo
Capitol Records Building, Morse code
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL3ZmiJXFwQ
Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em theme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tduNoff-GHE
thumbnail Beethoven by Luis Carreño
Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ludwig_van_Beethoven_250th_BDAY_by_Luis_Carre%C3%B1o.jpg
source
Mission Impossible theme, bass plays two long two short = M I
I'm surprised you've left out what is probably the most famous deliberate example: the "Mission Impossible" Theme. The 5/4 tempo results from treating dashes as dotted quarter notes, and dots as quarter notes. The resulting rhythm spells out "M-I", which is of course short for Mission Impossible.
Most prominent Morse code example I know of is in Neil Cicierega's "Piss"
Mike Oldfield's Amarok has a rather pointed morse message about getting out of his contract with Virgin Records.
They Might Be Giants has Morse in their track "Pencil Rain" — there's an instrumental section where you can hear "ay ay ay ay canta y no llores" ("hey, sing and don't cry") which is from the traditional Spanish song "Cielito Lindo" ("Pretty Little Sky") 😁
When he says he has "speeded up" the video, is that a personal quirk or standard British? For American me, it should be "sped" up, but I start thinking of so many cases where speeded could be used that it would not surprise me to learn my own usage is now the outlier.
In high school symphonic band I remember playing a piece by some modern (20th Century) composer whose name I cannot now recall, but the name of the piece was "Caccia and Chorale". In one section the score had the clarinets shrilling out -.. . –. over and over as a tribute to a friend of his whose initials were DEG.
The QI theme song. They reveal what is says in one of the Christmas episodes.
In the Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild the SOS morse code is used in the musical pieces of each of the Champions of the Divine Beasts. They are captured in those huge beasts and are sending signals for help. It is really a nice touch of indirect storytelling.
0:54 This misrepresents the intended rhythm of Morse. It neglects the space between the dots and dashes of a character. That space lasts as long as a dot. With judicious use of articulation marks, this actually makes rhythms *simpler*. Dot is staccato quaver; dash is tenuto crotchet (held for three-quarters of its length).
Many classical compositions, both traditional and modern, have sequences that are Morse-code-like. Whether this was an intentional thing or whether people just like dot-dash rhythms, I couldn't say.
One explicit place where it shows up is a paean to the technology featured in a song sung by the radio operator on the Titanic, in the stage musical of the same name. "With my dit dit dah dit dah dit….."
The laughing sign in modern media communication is LoL. When I was a a radio amateur (call sign G4HED) we used the morse code for H I …. ..
In Amarok, from the eponymous album, Mike Oldfield spelled F.U.C.K.R.B. . The RB in question being Richard Branson, because Mike Oldfield had to deliver two more albums and didn't feel it…
Honourable mention is the mission: impossible theme that spells M I in Morse
The dream smp example you used is actually a song originally from the game Undertale! Pretty sure that that’s Fallen Down from the soundtrack
The red aircraft warning light on top of the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria used to flash “Ons vir jou Suid Africa” in morse code. Maybe it still does, but I haven’t been there for years.
Dream Theater has a Morse code message in the song 'In The Name Of God', at the 5:50 point that spells out "eat my ass and balls" – my apologies for the foul message, it was apparently a joke by drummer Mike Portnoy 😂
Thank you as always, Dr. Lindsey. And I've even learned a new fact about English (I'm not native, unfortunately): I heard you saying "I speeded up the video" twice, and before I thought "sped" was the only correct past tense of "to speed". For those ignorant people like me: before the recommendation was to use "sped" but "speeded up", now both forms are correct no matter what (correct me if my source is wrong).
Radioactivity by Kraftwerk has the most unmissable Morse code ever.
I'm glad YYZ was the first song mentioned 😀
In 'Ship Ahoy,' the great Eleanor Powell tap dances a message in morse code. https://youtu.be/jHHj09tVi9Q
I’m not sure if it was intended or not, but your explanation of the victory V …_ made me think of the “victory” music line from Final Fantasy 7, the first 4 notes which are "…_".The remaining notes make "_ _ _._" or “VMK,” which is the only reason I’m unsure as to whether or not this was an intentional reference.
Never thought I’d see the dream smp appear in a Dr. Lindsey video, but hey, I’m here for it
The Divine Beast music tracks in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild have SOS and SAD in Morse in the background as well.
Wouldn’t the ending of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em be an ellipsis?
The clapping at the beginning of Muse's "Starlight" spells "tits" in Morse Code.
Congratulations. I was excited to see your name flash on the screen!
I have two short things:
#1 My great uncle wanted very much to serve in WWII. He was told he was color (colour!!!) -blind. So he studied the colors on the flags with a friend. He quickly learned the order of the flags. He was accepted and he was a pro with Morse Code. After service he became a high school principal in San Diego CA!!
#2 I love Louisiana and Georgia. Visiting a Plantation on one journey to the South, the guide mentioned that the slaves could sing loudly and pass on messages to each other, mainly to report an overseer who might to grab them, and their voices even reached other plantations while they worked in the fields. I have been trying to find out what language they used, Cajun, French, or a made-up language. Does anyone know?
"I've speeded" I thought it is "I've sped" not speeded?
How about Message In A Bottle by the Police? I've always felt like there's an SOS in there…
The theme of Heute, the main evening news on Germany's ZDF, formerly included the show's name in Morse code: …. . ..- – . or HEUTE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzNDNmj4skQ
The loading tune for the Commodore 64 game "Rambo: First Blood" written by Martin Galway spelled out the names of the game's creators on Morse code. But he botched it so all I's came out as E's.
Amarok by Mike Oldfield has "FUCK OFF RB" (in reference to Richard Branson) at about the 48 minute mark.
The POW Morse code stuff really got me. I’d seen the video of the man blinking but I never knew it spelled out torture. I don’t know why, maybe because I was expecting him to merely say “help,” but that genuinely upset me. The next example where they tried to tell POWs to hold on a little longer made me feel a bit better tho
Happy new year Dr!
The Walten files has a song in bunnyfarm that spells SOS
The Minecraft music is actually from Undertale, the original track is called "Fallen Down"
Maybe a video on differences in verb (ir)regularity across dialects? e.g. "speeded" in your dialect vs. "sped" in mine?
The Glen Campbell hit “Wichita Lineman” has Morse code incorporated in it.
Coincidentally, I’ve tried my luck at writing a jingle with morse code. The idea was to set the name of the nonprofit I cofounded, “Prosocial” “Design” “Network”, in morse code at perfect 4ths and 5ths apart. The hope being it would convey our nonprofit’s vision of using information (embodied by morse code) to help make the internet a friendlier, more harmonious place (as illustrated by use of 4ths and 5ths).
Of course, because of the words being different lengths, only the final 3 letters of Network “ork” are distinct at the moment! 😅🎶
(I said I tried my luck with music. I didn’t say I was successful 😂)
In Iron Maiden's Empire of the Clouds, which tells the story of the last flight of the British airship R101, you can hear the morse code for "SOS" being played on the drums partway through. I believe it marks the moment the ship's crew realises crashing is inevitable.
There is a Japanese song that use Morse code but translate it wasn’t very pleasant
In the game "Kirby and the Forgotten Land", there's scene where Kirby enters an elevator leading to laboratory of some kind. When they enter the elevator, the lights flicker on, making the sound you would expect fluorescent lighting to. This sound however spells out the letters EFILLIN in Morse Code. This is reference to a character in the game whom the antagonist wished to capture.
Of note is that this spelling is based on the character's Japanese name of エフィリン, and that in the English localization, their name was changed to Elfilin, making the Morse Code inaccurate, most likely because the localizers had no idea the Japanese dev team have inserted this detail into the game to begun with.
Happy New Year!
One of my biggest linguistic pet peeves is when people say "boLth" instead of "both"; what's up with that?
Beethoven: Fifth symphony… roman numeral V pa pa pa paaaaa…. Or is that just me overthinking this
1:31 have you SPEEDED the video up? Wow, looking it up I discover that both are ok. Probably 'sped' is more archaic. As a foreigner (do have a MA in English) I learned that everything we learned in school in the 80's in Belgium, was suffering from RP-itis too!
The same process is happening in Dutch: strong verbs turn weak when they tend to become less common.
Here's a random question, why doesn't "foot" rhyme with "boot"?