Can you tell what popular song this is? What about when the notes are all put back into their proper octave range?
This demonstration is a version of Diana Deutsch's Mysterious Melody illusion. It shows how pitch range is an essential part of melodic perception. Although all of the notes stay in exactly the same pitch class (e.g., a C note remains a C note) the melody is much harder to recognize when the notes are semi-randomly scattered across higher and lower octaves.
If you listen through the cycle of scrambled and unscrambled versions a few times you might even find yourself starting to hear the real Beach Boys melody, even when the octaves are all wrong.
