Ivy, Jacob Schles ∙ 02/01/2020 ∙ February 2020
In the modern world, Music™ is a basic necessity. Life without Music is practically unimaginable. But long ago, life without it was a given. There was no one bumping music from their car, no absolute bops in clubs, and dancing was a confusing sport rather than a fun activity. It was a dark, dark time.
The year was 1914. World War One was just on the horizon. On April 12th, a child was born in Brooklyn. His name was Johnny Music, short for Jonathan Musically. As a child, little Johnny always loved playing with drumsticks, banging on walls and people (as drums hadn't been invented yet). Johnny was an ambitious child without a passion. His parents worried that he would never become something meaningful, even though they saw the embers of ambition within him. He just needed a spark. And sure enough, in 1938, after years of practicing and hard work, Johnny finally invented the Bongo. A simple machine, the first prototype was comprised of a hollowed-out wooden log, tape, saran wrap, and pants. In fact, half of Johnny's journey to discovery was spent trying to anthropomorphize his instruments. He gave up this goal after Disney copyrighted the human form in 1939, just days before Johnny was to release his new product, the Guitar-With-A-Mannequin-Head (the name of which was still in dispute). Soon, Johnny went on to pursue new concepts in music.
Mr. Music began to compose the first Songhjuihjmhupxerhihjexxkxkhkxuedarher, which was renamed to simply a "song" after the name was found to be unpronounceable. After many hard years of slaving away, inventing notes such as B, F, S, C++, and NF. Johnny finally completed "If It's Your Birthday and You Know It Clap Your Hands." He had originally planned to call it "If You're Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands", but that song was already copyrighted by Disney, despite not yet existing. Arguably Johnny's greatest achievement was when he realized he was able to multiply the Pythagorean Theorem by the Quadratic Formula, and when he subsequently used its result to discover the current musical staple of harmonies.
In the years to come, he invented 16 more instruments. The non-human Guitar, the Trumpet, and the Flute (which he later upgraded to the far superior Kazoo) were the most successful. Prior to those, the Banjo, Mandolin, and Ukulele (early and poor prototypes of the Guitar that Johnny sold during the darker times of his life) had been released. The Clarinet, the Trombone, the Trombone with Pants, and the Trombone with Better Pants were all instruments he invented during the 1960s for his new genre, Jazzz (later shortened to Jazz). Later in his career, he invented the Triangle (the shape, the instrument, and the romantic relationship), the Violin, The Bad Violin, Mayonnaise, The Cello, and his penultimate invention, the Scary Tambourine (non-scary versions appeared 37 years later).
It took Mr. Music 7 years until he got a new idea for an instrument. On a bright day in 1987, Johnny was on a hike with his cousin Xyler. As the legend goes, they were hiking through a forest owned by Jeff Bezos, which had recently had a massive wildfire raging through it. Bodies of dead animals and burnt trees surrounded the two. While Johnny was checking out a burnt tree, Xyler wandered around mindlessly. Johnny suddenly heard a strange yet melodic noise as Xyler tripped over the skeleton of a dead deer. The noise inspired Johnny in a way he hadn't known before. He spent nights upon nights perfecting his new instrument. And finally, he had done it. He called it the Xylophone. Of course, as most know it was a massive failure, leading to the end of Johnny's career. For now.
But the Xylophone was not his only failure. As many have already inferred from Mr. Musically's last name, in 2014 he invented musical.ly. This led to his assassination by the infamous Tommy TikTok, two years before he invented his own similar platform. TikTok was then assassinated by John Wilkes Booth as revenge for assassinating Mr. Music, but the deed had already been done. Thus the legacy of Johnathan Musically was forgotten, and at age 100, little is known about his enigmatic life.