Hold music

Ok, so I sense you want us to guess what it was.

... "My Pal Foot Foot" covered by Mantovani Orchestra?

 

Is it the one with the bridge that goes "Please continue to hold. Your patronage is very important to us".

 

Disappointing. I was hoping for some advice about my next planned purchase.

https://www.ehx.com/products/freeze

 

A colleague and I were asked to provide background music during the cocktail hour at a company event once (four score and seven years before Covid, or so it seems). As a joke, we played a version of our company’s hold music as one of our songs in the “setlist”. One of our other colleagues came up to us afterwards and said that he started feeling annoyed part way through the cocktail hour and realized it was our cover of the hold music that was triggering him.

Ironically, I got one of the few compliments ever about my playing music from my partner (who was there in attendance), as she is generally not super keen on my type of music. She said we sounded less synthetic than the actual hold music and should have recorded our version and sent it to the company to use instead.

 

usually its just awful midi loops on repeat....but a a week or so ago, I called a customer service line...it was like random piano notes. As if Yoko Ono got eaten by an answering machine. Almost to the point that I thought, 'are they just trying to make horrible tones to keep our attention so we don't hang-up?'

I literally hoped its the later, and that someone didn't think it sounded good. It was bad to the point that I continued to think of it. Like commercials that don't make any sense (at first glance).

 

Here’s what gets me with most hold music. It sounds like it’s being played full volume through earbuds taped to a satellite phone that’s broadcasting it to the ISS, where it is played over the loudspeaker and then recaptured on a dictaphone that plays it back through an 8-bit a/d converter, whence it is then broadcast back to Wisconsin where it is piped via sound powered phone system to points throughout the US.

 

There was a Fred Armisen stand up video where he was talking about hotel lobby music and said something to the effect of, “You know, there’s somebody out there who actually comes up with this music.”

I feel sorry for the people who write and record hold music. Imagine creating music that bores/annoys the daylights out of people. Then again, maybe it pays well? I can’t imagine someone listening to hold music and thinking, “Man, that’s a tasty lick there!”

My local pharmacy plays some of the worst hold music. Sounds like what you’d hear in a Sears commercial in the late ‘70s.

 

Never under-estimate bad taste! I think about it every time I hear hold music. I swear some of these people probably think they're making a 'dope beat'.

It was the weird 8-bit Avant-garde midi loop that took me to a new level of WTF.

 

That is true. And for what it’s worth, I did submit a composition to my band a while back that was rejected for sounding like hotel lobby music. I just thought it was a solid Stuff/George Benson-esque groove.

 

Get a grip man...you may never be able to properly say "welcome to Bell Atlantic" - but I'm sure your tunes are better than hold music!

 

Should I worry that you know the beautiful music of Mantovani and the Nashville Brass?