218: Garfield Music

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Garfield Music

Made by: qvaak

Explanation

Sufficiently explained in the author's note.

The author writes:

We talk a lot about rhythm as we discuss comics. It might be a good idea to analyse comics via musical notation! Maybe. Notation aimed for percussive instruments would be much more natural than the standard one I used, but we of course want the familiar look. It's more fun.

I can't do music, and I don't know the notation either. ...Well, some Wikipedia reading later I know much more. Enough to deliver an idea.

I reserved the diatonic scale for the main characters (in arbitrary order): G is for Garfield, A for Jon Arbuckle, D for Odie the Dog, C for Nermal the World's Cutest Kitten. Flattened notes are for other characters, without fixed designations (not that it makes any difference in such a short piece). I used Db for dogs, Bb for bats and high Gb for generic statists.

I trust this would sound horrible.

I had no notation software and felt I should manage well enough without. I used Inkscape as machinery and Wikimedia Commons as a provider of building blocks (some of which are thus mentioned).

Original strips: 1996-01-01, 1996-01-02, 1996-01-03, 1996-01-04, 1996-01-05, 1996-01-06, 1996-01-07, 1996-01-08, 1996-01-09, 1996-01-10, 1996-01-11, 1996-01-12, 1996-01-13, 1996-01-14, 1996-01-15, 1996-01-16, 1996-01-17, 1996-01-18, 1996-01-19, 1996-01-20, 1996-01-21, 1996-01-22, 1996-01-23, 1996-01-24, 1996-01-25, 1996-01-26, 1996-01-27, 1996-01-28, 1996-01-29, 1996-01-30, 1996-01-31.

EDIT: Two of our authors have actually performed the piece! Panpear did it by printing the music out, sitting down at an electric piano, and playing it. Colin F. did it using direct score input into GarageBand, and laid the relevant comic strips out in time as a music video.

Transcript

{A musical composition}
Title: Garfield - January 1996
Composer: Jim Davis
Tempo direction: Giocoso
{Musical notation, each bar representing a strip}