Irgendwie ________ (present tense, low stakes) Sowieso ________ (past tense, no tears)
Musically, these words are begging for a progression. Try it: say irgendwie on a falling minor third. Say sowieso on a suspended chord that never resolves. That’s why people hunt for the notes. They’ve heard the melody in their own heads — a lazy bassline, a lo-fi drum machine, a voice that’s too tired to be sad. irgendwie und sowieso noten
The Noten became a community project. Not official sheet music, but a living, crowdsourced score for a feeling. After scanning guitar forums, MuseScore files, and a mysterious Google Doc shared by a music teacher from Freiburg, here is the consensus “irgendwie und sowieso” progression — the closest thing to a standard: That’s why people hunt for the notes
F – G – Em – Am “Sowieso war nichts für immer” (Anyway, nothing was forever) Not official sheet music, but a living, crowdsourced
No one ever found the full song, because it doesn’t exist. But the myth grew. People transcribed it by ear. A Reddit user named u/vergissmeinnicht posted a handwritten chord chart in r/GermanMusic. A TikToker played it on a melodrone. A jazz pianist in Leipzig claimed to have found the “lost bridge” — a Bb diminished that “feels like missing the last train.”
It starts as a whisper on a rainy Berlin afternoon. A teenager shrugs into their scarf: „Ist irgendwie so.“ A couple splits up over cold coffee: „Das war sowieso nichts.“ And in every indie rock club from Hamburg to Vienna, someone shouts the line that has become a generation’s sigh set to a backbeat: „Irgendwie, irgendwie, irgendwie… sowieso.“