ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how processes of musical signification are heavily influenced by the contextualization of the music. It shows how the specific excerpts of a piece of pre-existing music can be organized in the visual setting of a commercial. In the context of audiovisual analysis, "oppositions or continua" and "relationships of units and parameters" are examined at the intersection of music and moving pictures. The chapter introduces the procedure of commutation test. Essentially, a commutation test provides "a simple control mechanism for testing the validity of a semiotic deduction". The chapter presents an overview of some of the most obvious commutation tests used for analyzing music in commercials. The case of Apple/The Blue Van has illustrated that the possible "linguistic attributes" of the music in a commercial must also be considered when analyzing musical signification. The Apple/The Blue Van case further illustrates how the contextualization of a song's lyrics essentially alters the signification of those lyrics.
