Audio Example 4.16:

"Ballad of a Thin Man," from verse 1

Dylan delivers this song largely on two pitches a minor third apart, making it a vivid example of the "minor-third toggle." Minor thirds are especially common in everyday speech—"dinner!" "nya-nya!" "airball!"—an association that gives Dylan's hectoring vocal here a real-world plausibility. Despite its clear pitches, which slot neatly into the B-minor key, one can almost imagine him saying it to an interviewer (such as Time reporter Horace Judson in a famous scene from Dont Look Back, shot three months before Dylan recorded "Thin Man").