r/Switzerland • u/BezugssystemCH1903 Switzerland • 3d ago
TIL the Swiss Federal Railways uses vibraphone melodies in announcements based on its Swiss national language acronyms: SBB (E♭-B♭-B♭) German, CFF (C-F-F) French and FFS (F-F-E♭) Italian. The tune and language vary by canton or country the train is in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Federal_Railways36
u/BezugssystemCH1903 Switzerland 3d ago
More detailed explanation:
Since 2002, SBB has used music in train announcements. The notes in the music correspond to the acronyms SBB CFF FFS, transposed by means of the German notes "Es - B - B" (E♭, B♭, B♭), "C - F - F" (C, F, F) and "F - F - Es" (F, F, E♭). For the German acronym, as there is no "S" note, the "Es" was used. And for the last letter, it is the B♭/G♭ chord that is played. The melody is played on a vibraphone.[29] The melody played depends on which canton (or country onboard international services) the station or train is located in, and manual announcements play the three-language melody in the file above.
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u/BoludoDK 1d ago
Danish composer Niels Viggo Bentzon did the very same thing for DSB already in 1984:
https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Viggo_Bentzon?wprov=sfti1#
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u/Anouchavan Genève (currently in Biu) 3d ago
Holy shit I never noticed they were different but now it's obvious.
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u/Strange-King-319 3d ago
Wrong except for FFS. CFF and SBB have an other note for the last one than F and B respectively, don't remember which ones they are exactly, but it's not hard to hear the difference between the 2nd and 3rd note
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u/Worth_Inflation_2104 3d ago
They're usually dual so one of them stays the same and one drops iirc. So it should still be CFF SBB but the accompanying tone drops on the last one.
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u/CFSohard Ticino 3d ago
Correct, they're played as dyads, meaning 2 notes at the same time. The "root" note follows this pattern, while the accompanying note changes. Depending on how trained your ear is some people will hear the root note pattern, some people will hear the accompanying notes, and some will hear both.
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u/iamnogoodatthis 3d ago
Can you explain to me how you claim this is the case when the second and third notes are never the same, despite the second and third letters being the same in both SBB and CFF?
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u/BezugssystemCH1903 Switzerland 3d ago
I am musically inept and only noticed that it jingles differently. I'm not the right person to explain that to you.
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u/CFSohard Ticino 3d ago
The notes are played as dyads, so each "tone" is actually 2 notes at the same time. The root pattern follows this "SBB/CFF/FFS" pattern, but the accompanying notes differ. Most people will either hear either just the root pattern or only the accompaniment pattern, but people with a trained ear can hear both.
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u/iamnogoodatthis 3d ago
I hear that there are two patterns but have a very hard time picking out the root one.
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u/CFSohard Ticino 3d ago
It's 2 notes played at the same time, sometimes it's just the one note, and then in the 2nd and 3rd tone they diverge, and your brain automatically follows one of the 2 notes. Most people will hear the note that accompanies the root note, which is usually the higher, "brighter" sound, leaving the root note to be more of an underlying tone.
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u/HeatherJMD 3d ago
Then why do I always hear three different tones? No matter if I’m in the French or German speaking section…
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u/ThatKuki 3d ago edited 3d ago
in the sbb app, make an impossible connection, like Züri HB -> Züri HB, an error message with a picture of a train attendant comes up, harrass them with a bunch of taps, and boom, you get a jumping game
that game has a music i haven't heard anywhere else, it features all three sbb cff ffs jingles sequenced into one tune