Musical jokes
July 14th, 2005
Q: What do you get when you play a new age song backwards?
A: A new age song.
Q: What happens if you sing country music backwards?
A: You get your job and your wife back.
Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
Q: How can you tell someone is a true music lover?
A: When they even put their ear up to the bathroom keyhole.
After silence, music comes closest to expressing the inexpressible.
Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
Any last requests?
A cowboy and a biker are on death row, and are to be executed on the same day. The day comes, and they are brought to the gas chamber. The warden asks the cowboy if he has a last request, to which the cowboy replies, “Ah shore do, wardn. Ah’d be mighty grateful if’n yoo’d play ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ fur me bahfore ah hafta go.”
“Sure enough, cowboy, we can do that,” says the warden. He turns to the biker, “And you, biker, what’s your last request?”
“That you kill me first.”
Top Ten Signs The Concert You’re Attending is Not The Real Woodstock
From “Late Show with David Letterman” on Tuesday, August 9, 1994
10. It’s hosted by Ed McMahon.
9. “Amplifiers” are just enormous dixie cups.
8. Every song contains a plug for Green Giant frozen vegetables.
7. You’re asked to put on a hat and sunglasses and the next thing you know, you’re being introduced as Bob Dylan.
6. One word: polkas.
5. Guy sitting next to you brought a glove and has caught three foul balls.
4. “Santana” turns out to be a jolly bearded guy with a sackful of presents.
3. They’re playing “May we turn the hose on you, please?” [All night Dave sprayed the crowd which gathers outside for each night’s show with a hose.]
2. You spot Rush Limbaugh stage-diving.
1. The crowd is chanting, “Tito! Tito! Tito!”
Glossary of music terms
Accent: An unusual manner of pronunciation, e.g. “Y’all sang that real good!”
Accidentals: Wrong notes
Ad Libitum: A premiere.
Agitato: A string player’s state of mind when a peg slips in the middle of a piece.
Agnus dei: A famous female church composer.
Allegro: Leg fertilizer.
Altered Chord: A sonority that has been spayed.
Atonality: Disease that many modern composers suffer from. The most prominent symptom is the patient’s lacking ability to make decisions.
Augmented fifth: A 36-ounce bottle.
Bar Line: A gathering of people, usually among which may be found a musician or two.
Beat: What music students to do each other with their musical instruments. The down beat is performed on the top of the head, while the up beat is struck under the chin.
Bravo: Literally, “How bold!” or “What nerve!” This is a spontaneous expression of appreciation on the part of the concertgoer after a particularly trying performance.
Breve: The way a sustained note sounds when a violinist runs out of bow.
Broken consort: When somebody in the ensemble has to leave and go to the restroom.
Cadence: When everybody hopes you’re going to stop, but you don’t.
Cadenza: The heroine in Monteverdi’s opera “Frottola”.
Cantus firmus: The part you get when you can only play four notes.
Chansons de geste: Dirty songs.
Chord: Usually spelled with an “s” on the end, means a particular type of pants, e.g. “He wears chords.”
Chromatic Scale: An instrument for weighing that indicates half-pounds.
Clausula: Mrs. Santa.
Coloratura Soprano: A singer who has great trouble finding the proper note, but who has a wild time hunting for it.
Compound Meter: A place to park your car that requires two dimes.
Con Brio: Done with scouring pads and washboards.
Conductor: A musician who is adept at following many people at the same time.
Conductus: The process of getting Vire into the cloister.
Counterpoint: A favorite device of many Baroque composers, all of whom are dead, though no direct connection between these two facts has been established. Still taught in many schools, as a form of punishment.
Countertenor: A singing waiter.
Crescendo: A reminder to the performer that he has been playing too loudly.
Crotchet: 1) A tritone with a bent prong. 2) It’s like knitting, but it’s faster. 3) An unpleasant illness that occurs after the Lai, if prolation is not used.
Cut time: When you’re going twice as fast as everybody else in the ensemble.
Da capo al fine: I like your hat!
Detache: An indication that