In Japan, the road serenades YOU!
When you get right down to it, music is all about assembling the right vibrations at the right time. Thus, it should come as no surprise that roads can be designed to sing you a song. In Japan, there's a stretch called Melody Road, which has a series of grooves cut into it with spacing varied to produce different tones as car tires roll over them at speed. The quarter notes painted on the road surface are a visual indicator to unsuspecting motorists that their car is not going to puke its driveshafts out, it's just the pavement having a little fun.
Here in the US, we've only got the wakeup strips in front of tollbooths and those warning divots cut into the shoulder to let you know when you're about to drift into the median. We wonder if designers of the singing roads start with simple riffs, like "Smoke On The Water," before moving on to more complex pieces. The first guy who manages to get a Bach Fugue down in asphalt will have our undying admiration. Do old roads get old songs? If that's the case, they'll be teaching the youngsters Sukiaki.
Video embedded after the jump.
Thanks for the tip, Ben!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
FThorn 12:07PM (11/13/2007)
I always wanted to make a road like that. Good to see someone did.
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Hank 12:10PM (11/13/2007)
omg that's horrible, please stick w/ smooth QUIET pavements so i can choose MY OWN music to enjoy while driving
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Ligor 12:51PM (11/13/2007)
I 2nd that,
and at times that music will be coming from the engine bay
Alex 12:22PM (11/13/2007)
If you drive down the highway at 55mph the white dashed line will follow the beat of "Duke of Earl".
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Yggdrasilly 12:32PM (11/13/2007)
The Japanese are big on this sort of thing: I remember seeing a documentary about the wooden deck outside some Shogunate manor which was built so that the floorboards would creak melodiously--"singing wood" they called it. The secret of its construction had been lost, so as the boards were replaced over time, the effect diminished.
I'm also told, through a translation of a Japanese short story, that when Western shoes were introduced to Japan, the Japanese were delighted by the fact that they creaked. They even took to wearing special insoles of "singing leather" to heighten the effect.
As for "singing pavement," I remember encountering this in Houston in 1980. They were just beginning to put grooves in highway pavement, and a recently-rebuilt section of I-45 struck a resonance with a friend's Ford pickup truck. It produced an eerie, atonal music that seemed to come from all around us in the dark (it was at night).
As "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" had come out only a few years before, we started looking around for the Mothership...
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9600baud 12:39PM (11/13/2007)
They have that on US roads. It sounds like your car falling on a lunar crater or driving through a mine field.
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Anthony 12:44PM (11/13/2007)
the song is spelled Sukiyaki. this reminds me of those visual cues on the road (don't recall whether it was at increasing or decreasing distances) to encourage drivers to change their speed
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nissanfreak87 12:48PM (11/13/2007)
hahaha, that's kinda cool
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nissanfreak87 12:48PM (11/13/2007)
oh, and those are eighth notes, not quarter notes
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durace 12:55PM (11/13/2007)
Haha, at first, I misread the title of the post, as "In Japan, the road GRENADES you!" which to picture totally supports. See the small objects behind the car to see what I mean. Haha!
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Eric Biran 1:18PM (11/13/2007)
I was expecting more from the video after reading the text. It sounds like stripping synchros more than any kind of music. It's probably difficult to synthesize, since the rear tires have to generate the same tone a fraction of a second after the fronts--and all cars have different wheelbases. They should have tried gradual changes in the grove spacing instead of only sections with consistent spacing, that would have been less mechanical.
These auto-musical pieces are a bit more impressive:
Queen - We are the (F1) Champions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aArSn4IhHI
Smoke on the Avenger:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LYP4yq-sX0
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Luis 1:39PM (11/13/2007)
That video was great! I've never heard we are the champions quite that way...thanks for the link.
iQuack 2:14PM (11/13/2007)
Yes! Sing along:
"We are the Champions, the Studebaker Champions!"
Those were the lyrics, right?
glitched 1:44PM (11/13/2007)
except i have seen this before in europe, its actually much better and its designed to help deter speeding, sence it only sounds good when you are at or below the speed levels
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AR 2:34PM (11/13/2007)
Angela Aki and Koda Kumi on the same Music Station show... wow, must be a great episode. Angela was probably on the show to promote her second CD, Today. I must say she's one of my favorite singer/song writer in the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz56LoXu2wE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGWtaK3Uhro
Only Music Station would feature something crazy like Melody Road.
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naugahyde 9:48PM (11/13/2007)
If you drive backwards does it play satanic messages?
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James Donovan 12:28AM (11/14/2007)
I'm going to avoid road like that, at all costs. They've just ruined a perfectly good strip of tarmac which looks like it could be fun! :(
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