A Musical road is a road, or part of a road, which when driven over causes a tactile vibration and audible rumbling transmitted through the wheels into the car body in the form of a musical tune.
Musical roads are known to exist in four countries: Denmark, Japan, South Korea, and the United States of America.
The first known musical road, the Asphaltophone, was created in October 1995 in Gylling, Østjylland, Denmark, by Steen Krarup Jensen and Jakob Freud-Magnus, two Danish artists.[1] The Aspaltophone is made from a series of raised pavement markers, similar to Botts' dots, spaced out at intermittent intervals so that as a vehicle drives over the markers, the vibrations caused by the wheels can be heard inside the car.[1]
In Japan, Shizuo Shinoda accidentally scraped some markings into a road with a bulldozer and drove over them, and realised that it was possible to create tunes depending on the depth and spacing of the grooves.[2] The Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute, which had previously worked on infra-red lights to detect dangerous road surfaces, refined Shinoda's designs to create the Melody Road. They used the same concept of cutting grooves into the concrete at specific intervals and found that the closer the grooves are, the higher the pitch of the sound; while grooves that are spaced further apart create lower pitched sounds.[3]
There are three Melody Roads; one in Hokkaido, another in Wakayama (where, at 40km/h, a car can produce the Japanese ballad "Miagete goran yoru no hoshi wo" by Kyu Sakamoto), and a third in Gunma, which consist of 2,559 grooves cut into a 175 meter stretch of existing roadway and when driven over at 50 km/h, produce the tune of "Memories of Summer".[4]
The Singing Road can be found close to Anyang, Gyeonggi, South Korea, and was created using grooves cut into the ground, similar to the Japanese Melody Roads. Unlike the Japanese roads, however, which were designed to attract tourists, the Singing Road is intended to help motorists stay alert and awake – 68% of traffic accidents in South Korea are due to inattentive, sleeping or speeding drivers.[5] The tune played is "Mary Had a Little Lamb", and took four days to construct, and is designed to work best at 100 km/h.[5]
The Civic Musical Road was built on Avenue K in Lancaster, California, United States, on 5 September 2008.[6] Covering a quarter mile stretch of road between 60th Street West and 70th Street West, the Musical Road used grooves cut into the asphalt to replicate the William Tell Overture. It was paved over on 23 September due to nearby residents complaining to the city council about noise levels;[7] but after further complaints from city residents about its removal, work began to recreate it on 15 October 2008 on Avenue G between 30th Street West and 40th Street West, two miles away from the nearest residence.[8] It opened two days later.[9]
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