Musical Roads

I saw a Honda car commercial on TV showing some people testing out a road they created to play a song as they drove over it by cutting grooves into it.

As they drove over the road in their Civic, they could hear the song playing beneath them.

I didn’t think this was real, but at the end of the commercial there was a sign that said “Civic Musical Road.”

I looked it up and sure enough, it was real.

Not only was it real, but there were actually many other musical roads in existence.

Asphaltophone
Asphaltophone was the first known musical road which was built in Gylling, Ostjylland, Denmark. Two Danish artists, Jakob Freud-Magnus and Steen Krarup Jensen built it in 1995.

This video doesn’t really show the road in action, but I couldn’t find anything better.

Melody Road
Melody Road was thought of on accident when Shizuo Shinoda accidentally scraped some markings into the road with his bulldozer. He drove over them and realized he could make music out of it.

Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute refinded Shinoda’s design and created Melody Road. Three Melody Roads were created in Hokkaido, Wakayama, and Gunma.

This is Melody Road in Hokkaido

This is Melody Road in Wakayama

I can’t find a video of the Melody Road in Gunma. If you come across one, please post it in the comments.

Singing Road
Singing Road also has grooves cut into it much like the Melody Roads, except this road was created for the reason to keep motorist awake. It took four days to create in Anyang, Gyeonggi, South Korea.

Here’s video from the Singing Road in South Korea

Civic Musical Road
This is the road from the commercial. It was originally built on Avenue K in Lancaster, California in 2008, but complaints from residents resulted in the road being paved over. Further complaints about the removal of the road then resulted in it being recreated in Avenue G, which is two miles away from the nearest home.

This was taken from the original Musical Road:

Here’s the Honda commercial featuring the newer Musical Road after it was recreated:

I would love to visit all of these roads and record them myself. If you have and video of it, upload it to YouTube and send me a link, I’d love to watch it.

1 thought on “Musical Roads”

  1. We have a singin road in Colorado too. Except instead of singing, it’s a grinding, ruckus sounding, to keep motorists awake. I’ve hit them many times- I wasn’t falling asleep though…

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