Heptone

song name	Heptone
artist	They Might Be Giants
releases	Unreleased, Dial-A-Song, Power Of Dial-A-Song, Free When You Call From Work
year	1983
first played	July 10, 1983 (1 known performance)
run time	0:32
sung by	Instrumental

Trivia/Info

• Originally known by fans for decades as an untitled instrumental, John Flansburgh explained this track on March 26, 2013 via Facebook:

It's a very obscure recording from Dial-A-Song called Heptone, celebrating the joy of riding a bike to a record store. Heptone was a record store on Flatbush Ave. that had 12" records of hip hop and UK imports of post-punk stuff. Got Malcolm McLarens' Duck Rock there, and the songs The Birthday Party and The Message.

• From the 2019 They Might Be Playing They Might Be Giants marathon, Linnell was asked how he got interested in composing with microtones. He responded:

The story is that someone I know introduced me to the book Genesis of a Music by Mr. Harry Partch. That was when I was about 22. I don't know why but I devoured this book and then I called up the Moog company in Rochester, NY, which is where they used to be, and I asked them how to turn my Moog synthesizer into a microtonal instrument. And then somebody there, I don't know who it was, wrote me this incredibly nice letter back with a schematic and where to buy all of the parts at Radio Shack to do this project. I completely suck at electronics stuff, but I followed the instructions and got the little chip and some wires and knobs and things, and I constructed this thing. And I pretty much blew up my synthesizer, more or less fried its innards by trying to make it into a microtonal electronic instrument—but not before John Flansburgh wrote and recorded this great song called "Heptone", which I don't think we've ever released. But that was the first microtonal thing we ever put out—or recorded, I guess didn't put out—and that was way back in the early '80s sometime. We should put "Heptone" out. That was a good song, and it used the now-destroyed Moog synthesizer.

• This instrumental was also one of the first recordings to be put into rotation on Dial-A-Song^[1].

Song Themes

New York City, Microtones, Musical Stores, Transportation

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