Sour note

How to play Sour note

Press Listen and a short tune of eight to sixteen notes plays through once, clean. Then it plays again, but this time exactly one note goes sour: a little sharp, a little flat or slipped to the next note of the scale. A row of coloured blocks lights up as the notes play, one block per note. Tap the block that went sour, or press its number key, as soon as you hear it. A fast catch is worth up to 100 points. The points start dropping just after the sour note has played, and smaller changes are worth more, so a slow catch of a half step still beats a slow catch of a big clanger. Pick wrong and the conductor shows you the real culprit and plays both versions back to back, so you can hear what you missed. Today's five tunes are the same for everyone and climb from easy to fiendish: a big wrong note in a slow tune first, a half step in a quick one last, for a score out of 500, a streak and a share card of five squares that gives nothing away. Endless keeps the tunes coming and gets harder every three, until you miss three. It has three levels: easy starts with clear wrong notes and soon gets to half steps, medium is half steps and slips from the first tune, and hard is the same with the blocks staying dark the second time round, so you have to count along. There you can replay both versions for a few points. With the sound off the game still works: the playing block shows how high its note is, so you can spot the one that jumps out of line.

Tips

• Commit as soon as something sounds off, waiting costs points
• A sour note usually clashes with the notes around it, so listen to how it fits rather than how high it is
• Half steps are the hardest to hear and the best paid, at least 70 points even when you are slow
• The slipped notes stay in key and only sound wrong against the tune you just heard, so remember the shape
• With the sound off, follow the bars on the blocks and look for the one that breaks the pattern

About Sour note

Sour note is a listening game about the moment a tune goes wrong. Every one of its more than one hundred melodies was composed for this game, in moods from marches and lullabies to jigs, waltzes, polkas, music boxes, ringtones and little fanfares. None of them borrows from a real song, jingle, theme or rhyme. The sounds are synthesised in your browser, and the conductor, who winces at every sour note, is drawn in code.

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