Motor Scooters: Motor Scooter Music

To my knowledge, there is no music written specifically for motorscooters, either as a solo instrument or in an ensemble. Some has been specifically written for scooterists and deals with the scooter experience. One such is the Scootering Tunes Music CD, an amateur effort composed and performed by an obsessed scooterist and released February 5, 2006.

However, though perhaps not primarily intended for the purpose, there are many pieces which serve well as accompaniment to scooter riding. The choice is entirely subjective and one of atmosphere and association. In no way can this treatment be particularly accurate, definitive, nor in fact, anything but ineffably silly, nonetheless, it could be of immense value to someone recently having come into possession of a scooter with an excellent sound system (which many of the new ones have) and in desperate need of well-conceived audio accompaniment.

Classic Scooters Enhance a Classical Image

See Classic Scooters

Music is more an integral part of the Italian culture even than motorscooters and, far more than any other people in the world, the Italian knows his/her music. The great operas of Giuseppe Verdi were written for public consumption and were and are sung in the streets, piazza's, and kitchens of the land -- as Verdi himself intended that they should be. One perfect piece for Motorscootering is from Verdi's Rigoletto. La donna é mobile, usually translated as "the lady is fickle/wavering/capricious" or something similar, it could just as well mean "The Lady is Mobile" -- what better theme for a lady on a motorscooter!

Excerpt from La donna é mobile (Available in: Operatic Selections by Mario Lanza-- Nobody sings it like Lanza).

For pure enthusiasm as one speeds through the countryside, one superb entry is the obscure Vivaldi mandolin concerto chosen for the bicycle race in Verona in the film "A Little Romance" which ends with Sir Lawrence Olivier's breathless wheeze: "You didn't have to try to win. All we had to do was get out of town."

Excerpt from the Vivaldi Mandolin Cto. (Available in the A Little Romance Soundtrack)

Nothing, however, can match the famous Rosini Crecendo for ecstatic acceleration towards an inevitable climax. Giachino Rossini, whose music is probably best known in the states for the role it played in Bugs Bunny cartoons and The Lone Ranger, wrote a number of overtures often characterized by a wonderful building of energy, velocity, and volume as they approach conclusion.

Excerpt, Rossini Crecendo from The Barber of Seville (Available in Rossini Overtures)

N.B.: Care must be taken to avoid accelerating past the speed limit while listening to Rossini.