Solution

Start with the rebus on the back of the card. You have to combine the GI from the memory stick with the ants that crawl over it. You get the word GIANTS. Adding this to the word cloud, you get the text ‘WOW! They Might Be Giants’. A quick google search should show that ‘They Might Be Giants’ is a band. That fits the front of the card nicely, seeing as it has something to do with music!

The map on the back of the Card is of a country, Turkey to be specific! The yellow circle highlights its capital. You could also research a famous song of the band They Might Be Giants. Both paths should lead to the final destination of this clue, Istanbul.

A bit of research should lead you to the following page: https://musescore.com/user/32135523/scores/5595010. Here you will find the song ‘Istanbul (Not Constantinople)’ transcribed into music sheets for the Violin, made by the user “sweetkulhet1” on the site of MuseScore.

Note that some staves on the front that should start with the G- or treble clef now start with the F- or bass clef. This information will be important later on.

See those weird symbols on the front of the card? If you hold the card upside down, you should recognize the symbols as being question marks. You should find the notes on MuseScore that are replaced with said question marks. But, don’t forget the clefs when counting! If there is a bass clef printed, you can’t count the note as if there were a treble clef (if you’re not familiar with the music-note system, try googling how to read/transcribe notes on staves). You should end up with the following notes, from the top stave to the bottom stave: G – A – E – D – D.

There is something else going on with the changed clefs of the staves on the front. You can find more of the clefs on the Card. The two violins have the treble and bass clef printed on them as well. Therefore, there is a connection between the series of notes we found of the staves and each violin. The treble violin gets the notes G, E and D, while the bass violin gets the notes A and D.

You should match the notes for each violins to the letters that are printed beneath the strings of those notes (research and Hint #7 should show you that violins have a G, D, A and E string). For example, the E-string on the bass violin would become the O, as the E is the 4th string. If you follow this through, ‘GED’ of the treble violin becomes ‘HLS’ and ‘AD’ of the bass violin becomes ‘IL’. Putting these letters in the original order of the staves, we get the output ‘HILLS’, the solution of this card.