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nation analogy
Probably the best way to think of a song is to imagine it as a nation. The tune is represented by the country itself providing somewhere for the population, or words, to live. But populations can change - over time different people, or words, come and go subtly altering the national characteristic, or the sound of the song. I can sense you are racing ahead of me and thinking “Isn’t shifting people around the world a job for the CIA?” Yes indeed it is, and I can see you bursting to ask “When these people arrive in their new country doesn’t the CIA have them greeted by some evil operator of an instrument of torture?” At the piano is Colin Sell.

nuclear physics analogy
We take a song and split it into its two main components - the words and the tune.

Try to think of the song as an ordinary everyday object - like a nuclear particle accelerator for example. This handy gadget is basically only two components, the linear cyclotron and the elemental betatron, and you hardly need to have what they do explained. As you know, these can be realigned in such a way that particle beams split supra-segmentally rather than by relativistic modulation. I know what you are thinking, surely that configuration creates a proton synchroniser? Exactly!

But there is another component we haven’t touched on - that’s right the plug. How many times have you tried to use your particle accelerator only to find you had forgotten to plug it in? That is why so many atomic research establishments take on someone whose sole job it is to perform that menial repetitive task requiring a minimum skill base and little or no training. Even then there are those that fail the interview and are forced into casual employment elsewhere. At the piano please welcome Colin Sell.

number theory
If explained properly this is actually much less complicated than it might seem. Although we say one song, that one song can actually be divided in two. I’m sorry to throw all these technical terms at you but 2 is what is known as a prime number as it is the integer (that is, the sum of 1 and 1) - as you know 1 is also a prime number but it is also a cardinal numeral. An integer is defined as a number that cannot be factorised into other integers but is only divisible by itself or 1, whereas a Cardinal is a butterfly of the genus Pandoriana Pandora commonly found in the meadows of the temperate regions of Southern Europe.

Now 1 + 2 = 3, and the numbers 1 2 3 (usually expressed in that order by experts) are the factors of 6, which is what is known as the first perfect number. The only thing known about a perfect number is that we have never yet heard one from Colin Sell.

[Ed - give yourself a pat on the back if you spotted the mistake in the above description.]

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