"(Though most renditions of "Happy Birthday" lend credence to Morpheus' lesson from The Matrix that there's a difference between knowing the path and walking it.)"
I have to resist the temptation to deliberately sing my renditions of Happy Birthday on the diminished fourth/augmented fifth of whoever the loudest person is, as a passive protest of the fact that even if I do, it hardly affects the result.
It has somehow become a very impressionistic song, when sung by The People. There's definitely the sense of the relevant intervals as the song progresses but the sheer randomness of the intervals of each singer relative to each other has, I think, attained some sort of actual cultural status that is actually special to that song. Get a few people to sing "Row Row Row Your Boat" and they are generally much more on tune for some reason, barring those who can't carry a tune at all under any circumstances. It's like some sort of cultural signaling about how they don't take birthdays too seriously or something like that.
I have to resist the temptation to deliberately sing my renditions of Happy Birthday on the diminished fourth/augmented fifth of whoever the loudest person is, as a passive protest of the fact that even if I do, it hardly affects the result.
It has somehow become a very impressionistic song, when sung by The People. There's definitely the sense of the relevant intervals as the song progresses but the sheer randomness of the intervals of each singer relative to each other has, I think, attained some sort of actual cultural status that is actually special to that song. Get a few people to sing "Row Row Row Your Boat" and they are generally much more on tune for some reason, barring those who can't carry a tune at all under any circumstances. It's like some sort of cultural signaling about how they don't take birthdays too seriously or something like that.