Waiata Split Enz

Music Quiz: Aphoristic Mangles the Pop Classics

Here are the final results for the 6 week challenge – we had 10 contestants who participated every week.


Average
Paul62.38%
J63.38%
Badfinger68.08%
2loud2oldmusic72.53%
Angie72.59%
Jim S74.65%
jprobichaud 74.97%
Bruce75.02%
Rich K83.18%
Tony93.21%

Tony won comfortably, and Rick Kamerman was also comfortably ensconced in second place. The battle for third place was very tough, with Bruce just edging out jprobichaud and Jim S., with less than .5% between third and fifth, and even the next two players close behind.

According to my stats, jprobichaud was the most consistent scorer after Tony, with no perfect scores but no particularly low scores either. Bruce managed to place third despite the lowest score in a quiz from any of the contestants – 26% for the 2000s.

We’re trying something different this week. Sick of slick, professional music quizzes? This week’s amateur hour – I play some songs on piano, you try and recognise them. I recorded it on my phone and put it onto Youtube via Powerpoint, so the sound quality’s roug. There are a couple of hesitant moments as I just recorded a couple of run-throughs, and it’s tricky playing 14 different songs in quick succession. I think there are a couple of songs that are tough, because they’re basically me jamming on the chord sequences, and the end result doesn’t resemble the original song much.

https://www.sporcle.com/games/grahama/aphoristical-murders-the-classics

It’s an aural quiz, so you’ll need five minutes where you can listen to the video clip to play.

I’m obviously unable to participate this week. My wife tried it, and scored 10/28. How did you get on?

35 Comments

  1. I’m on a call right now but will definitely give a listen to these tunes a little later. As to the quiz, I am just happy that I made it into the Top Ten!

  2. 10 of 28, just like your better half. This was a tough one. I’m with Jim re: the contest – happy to squeeze into the top ten. 🙂

  3. That was fun and tough. I got my 6 points from the 70s and a few of the others sounded familiar. The best thing about this week’s quiz is you made it yourself.

  4. Yes, nicely played. I love piano. 10/28 for me. The easy ones, of course, were the ones that already had piano. The rest were damn hard to distinguish “out of context.” That was a fun one. I look forward to the Aphoristical World Tour.

    • Yeah, I was just looking at the results, and it’s all the 1970s ones with obvious piano parts that are the most guessed. I think the late 1960s and early 1970s that are sort of peak piano era. If I do a sequel I should stick there or give out more clues.

  5. Fun idea!
    And nice piano work too – I earned a 20/28. I should have got the 1971 tune, I recognized the 1968 one, and was unfamiliar with the most recent pair.
    Enjoyed the 75/92 hint!

  6. Congratulations to the setter and the clear winners. Well deserved gold and silvers to Tony and Rich.
    I’d like to share the bronze with all those within the .05 variance bracket.
    Thank you linesmen, thank you ballboys.

  7. I started & stopped your latest quiz a couple of times since last Wednesday because something or someone kept interrupting me just as I started it. Finally had 5+ free minutes today and finished with a (hopefully) respectable 12/28. 2-3 others melodies were hovering just out of reach of my brain cells but I’m not sure how much time it would have taken to remember them. Nice work on the keys, Graham.

    As for the decades-spanning quizzes, I humbly accept my silver medal. 4+ decades of obsessive collecting finally paid off. 😀

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Aphoristic Album Reviews is almost entirely written by one person. It features album reviews and blog posts across a growing spectrum of popular music.

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Graham Fyfe has been writing this website since his late teens. Now in his forties, he's been obsessively listening to albums for years. He works as a web editor and plays the piano.

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