Why all the beeps, whistles, and chirps? On the train full of cellphone users, at the mall with competing Muzaks, we live in a network of audio "bleed," a world where, with so much going on, we need short signals as a running conversation with the gadgets that keep us in touch with our desires.

A Hamilton Beach microwave oven beeps a C when you hit a button, when a cooking task is done, or when it wants your attention for some other thing. Turn on the Hewlett-Packard PC and it hits an A of hello. A Verizon customer turns on an LG cellphone and enjoys a spray of notes at startup.

Sumanth S. Gopinath is an assistant professor of music at the University of Minnesota and a scholar of ringtones. He says we've created a "treble culture" - a world of high, tiny digital beeps in toys, watches, and gadgets. Although these technologies "originated in the U.S., Japanese producers took to them with particular alacrity," he says. Japan and East Asia have been especially prominent in creating global treble culture.

We may be creating a culture of shorter and shorter musical forms. One of the most familiar pieces of music in the world, says Gopinath, is the "Nokia Tune" - you know it (http://bit.ly/4sqW5q) - which "is heard 1.8 billion times a day." Gopinath says short musical pieces like this, heard in the thousands, amount to a kind of "world music."

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