February 11th, 2004
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Train music
Japan is a very surreal place. It’s a country with origins in service, so there’s a myriad of intresting and sometimes strange details woven into almost every facet of consumer life.
Though the details of why and for what exact events are unclear to me, I’m quite a fan that JR East plays music at the platform before a train leaves. Infinitely more pleasing than just a shrill electric whistle, it never ceases to entertain me. The pieces are little ditties of pre-recorded synth music, with a lot of pads and bells. The audio fidelity is somewhere between radio and PA system, but I can’t tell if that’s from the age of the speakers or the music itself. My guess is they’ve been playing the same jingles since the bubble in the early nineties, but I’ve got nothing to back that up.
I suppose must people are desensitized to it, or don’t care, but I love it. It always makes me feel wistful and happy. I guess it’s kinda corny but I wish they had a CD of all the different melodies. There’s actually quite a lot, and they seem to vary by line and station. Maybe if I can get a decent quality digital recorder, I’ll go around and capture them all for an ambient train sounds piece.
