Mysterious Warbling

Filed under: Disability, Music, Television
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The TV show 1899 is one of those shows where everything is Mysterious.

In particular, the music and sounds effects are very very Mysterious.

Which of course means that the captions have to convey how Mysterious the sounds are.

Fortunately, the captioners were up to the task.

Below is a list of about thirty captions describing music and sound effects, all from the first episode of the series. It’s entirely possible that I missed some, but among the ones I wrote down, there are no exact duplicates. That’s pretty impressive, especially given that if I had been writing the captions, they probably all would have said “[Mysterious Warbling].”

  • [anxious music continues]
  • [audio warbles disconcertingly]
  • [delicate, mysterious music continues]
  • [dissonant music warbles]
  • [eerie audio ends abruptly]
  • [eerie, asynchronous laughter]
  • [enigmatic synth chords reverberate]
  • [faint, rapid musical notes flitting]
  • [furtive chattering]
  • [haunting vocalizations intensify]
  • [jarring stinger]
  • [low, menacing chords]
  • [low, unsettling brass notes play]
  • [metal groaning ominously]
  • [music warbles dissonantly]
  • [ominous drumbeat plays]
  • [ominous industrial synth music plays]
  • [ominous music swells]
  • [ominous synth music quavers]
  • [ship’s horn blares]
  • [staccato audio glitches]
  • [staticky, cacophonous music plays]
  • [synth chords drone]
  • [tense percussive music plays]
  • [tense synth music]
  • [ticker stops abruptly]
  • [unnerving synch music playing]
  • [unsettling drumbeat]
  • [unsettling, mysterious music plays]

In addition to all that, there was at least one instance of Mysterious Warbling that they neglected to describe for a while after it started. Eventually they added a caption saying something like “[mysterious music playing],” but I was disappointed that they didn’t call it warbling.

For more about captions, see Music descriptions in TV captions.

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