I had lunch with Fred Lerdahl, a guy in the music department who does research in expectations–what motifs might be expected next in a musical piece–and I was reminded of the Bugs Bunny episode where Yosemite Sam rigs up the piano to explode when a certain note is played, then puts up the sheet music for Bugs, who annoyingly keeps playing the tune but getting the last note wrong. Yosemite gets increasingly frustrated until he finally bangs out the tune himself–causing the piano to blow up, of course.

Anyway, my lunch companion hadn’t heard of the episode so I found it on Youtube and sent it to him. His reply:

Thanks, it’s terrific! One thing, though: Bugs is supposed to hit C for the TNT to explode; on the soundtrack he hits C# and then Eb instead; but in the video he hits C both times (as does Sam, but in his case the soundtrack hits C, too). The cartoonists should have shown Bugs hitting the different notes (unless one wants to get metaphysical about it).

P.S. Fred adds that he just showed the cartoon to his wife, and she noticed that the dynamite is attached not to C but to B (that is, to one key to the left of the exploding note).