A (sung) cautionary tale for those sitting exams and in later life
An occasional song
Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash
I wrote this as On the dangers of overengineering the solution… in 2001, revised it in 2006 and dusted it off to help all those doing battle in the exam room in June 2025.
From my swimming pals I discovered last week that invigilation has already swung into action, so this is topical again.
Over the Bank Holiday weekend, I was demonstrating SUNO to a friend, threw these words in and discovered it makes a fun folk song. So, I’ve put a seed in Bm into SUNO (score below), and here’s what I got. More details below.
If any folk group wants to do this properly, let’s talk.
In the meantime, enjoy the song.
Our young engineer took his seat in the hall (He was sitting his final exam). 'I wonder,' he thought of the people who taught Him, 'How good do they think that I am?' He drew a deep breath, flipping over the page, Reflecting on all that he knew. But the question that met him and really upset him Was: How much is two, add on two? Just that! What is two more than two? Now here was a question, the answer to which No soul in the world did not know. With such a poor break he would struggle to make His edge in arithmetic show. He thought long and hard on this thorniest point And wondered about a review. Perhaps he should change it, or just rearrange it – For he was a stakeholder, too! Yes, he was a stakeholder, too! He slowly considered this loftier brief: He studied the paper once more, Appending suggestions to all of the questions To make each a worthier chore. And then he returned to the question he’d spurned, Which clearly demanded repair! He thought of a log just to give it a jog… Should he times or divide it, or square? O! Times or divide it, or square? The problem he faced as he chewed on his pen (Which was shaking his soul to the core) Was that two to the two, just as two times two, too, Gave the two-plus-two-answer of four. He frowned as he drew upon all that he knew, Then he wrote (which would settle the score) That the log to base two of factorial two Would be less than factorial four. Yes, it’s less than factorial four. He felt that the symbol for ‘less than’ would fail To convey the extent of the gap, So he chose to design (as he ran out of time) His own mark, with a squish and a tap. It came as a shock to our hero to find He was sadly and famously failed. His tutor, poor soul, is now out on the dole And the head of the college was jailed. Yes, the head of the college was jailed. Envoi: When meeting your customers over a beer Or tackling their trickiest task, You will always connect and retain their respect If you answer the question they ask. Just answer the question they ask. (latest: tpy 5.v.26)
Here’s the pdf of the ‘seed’ I planted - it was, of course, the .mp3 file from Sibelius that I dropped into SUNO. After that I asked it to ‘cover’ the seed with the words above.
The instructions were:
English folk meets prog Celtic, emphasizing a crisp, baroque-influenced touch. Echo the original melody and stick to the original chords and improvise around the chord progressions. Folk band with flutes, fiddles, guitars, tambourines and drum with clarinet. Main vocalist with tight harmonic backing periodically.
Clear rhythm that grows to a driving and addictive beat throughout.