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lonelysandwich:

Lucas Wagner on Apple’s “tri-tone” sound:

Completed

Hey, Apple? The tri-tone worked really well as the “burn complete” sound in iTunes, and later on as the “install complete” sound in Installer.

But what the heck were you thinking by making it the default text message sound on the iPhone?

(Also, something I found out while converting the Tri-tone AIFF to MP3: its internal name is “sappy.snd”. Anyone got a cool backstory on that one?)

“Sappy” makes no sense at all unless it’s the name of the engineer who made it. The notes are D-A-D, so maybe it’s sappy because the engineer was a new father. That’s probably it.

But then again, “tri-tone” is sort of a misnomer, too.

An actual tritone is a musical interval that spans three whole tones, and because it normally sounds horrible and dissonant and creates tension to be resolved into a perfect 5th, it’s historically known as Diabolus in Musica, or “the Devil’s interval” and was even suppressed by the Church in the Middle Ages.

I actually like it more than Lucas does because, like a dog, I’ve been trained when I hear it to think people like me. And when I’m finished installing an app or burning a disc on my Mac, I still think people like me. Devil’s interval indeed.