Open thread 6/7/21
In concert, Steve Goodman used to borrow a cowboy hat from someone in the audience and then wear it when he sang his comic song “You Never Even Call Me By My Name” (which had been a hit for David Allan Coe in 1975). But one night no one had a cowboy hat, although someone offered Goodman a motorcycle helmet. So Steve came up with this set to go with that headgear:
Wonder what song they were hummin’…
https://twitter.com/DJcalligraphy/status/1401544947476561930
(Whistle While You “Work”? My Country ’tis of Thee”? It Ain’t Me, Babe”?…)
That was awesome! A pity he died so young.
Thanks for that comic relief. Yeah, “dead girl songs.” That took me back.
I highly recommend this video for those of you interested in music, especially harmony:
https://youtu.be/lvmzgVtZtUQ
David Bennett does a great job exhibiting the fundamentals in four different (and each uniquely important) methods; sound, vision, mathematics and physics. I’m going to write more in a second comment, as I think it would be useful to watch the video without any further introduction.
More on David Bennett’s video:
The first take away is: “because it sounds pleasing to the ear.” That’s first and foremost what musicians are trying to do and Bennett does a great job of helping one hear that. There are some combinations of notes that are discordant. No matter what they are named. No matter how we configure a scale. “A rose by any other name…” Some notes do not sound good together.
The second take away is convenience. As what was pleasing was getting codified and built into instrument design and composition in the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries musicians, composers and instrument craftsmen were focused on making what was pleasing to the ear convenient. As Bennett shows; some of the tones left out of our 12 note scale have practical uses, and can be pleasing, but a keyboard spanning 4 scales would be 20 feet long if it had 30 notes. Or a cornet would have 17 valves. Or a cello would have 25 strings and an 18″ fret board. All too impractical to be played with any speed or dexterity. A scale with more than 12 notes gets to be cumbersome.
(Special addendum to the second take away…) Singers [and, as pointed out in the video, trombonists and fretless string players] are not limited to 12, strict intervals. The Bee Gees make great use of this in a lot of their harmonies and vocalizations; sliding up and down and in and out of “perfect” pitches.)
Third important take away: it’s physics. I love that Bennett includes some oscilloscope images of actual sound waves produced by notes. Hopefully, for those of you fascinated by harmony, this was a “Eureka” moment. In his depictions you can see how certain note’s sound waves literally sync up at certain intervals. It’s a physical, visual representation of what we are hearing with our ears. Some notes sound discordant when played together and others do not and the reason, the actual, real world reason, is based on how the vibrations made in the air when playing those notes sync (or do not sync) with one another.
Fourth take away is the mathematics of it all. He also shows the frequencies of the vibrations of the notes and shows how they have been slightly tweaked to fit into a 12 note pattern. If you pause on the charts showing the numeric frequencies you can see the mathematics of it, and without even hearing a single note played, you would be able to predict which notes will harmonize well with others, and which will not.
(One more comment to come…)
I have been interested in music for my entire life and it took me years to figure out what Bennett teaches in that 17 minute video. For those of you with limited musical knowledge, you may want to freeze it, or rewatch it in a few places. Even though I already knew everything he shows, I still paused and rewatched a few segments.
I have asked conductors, band leaders, music teachers… many of the questions explained in this video and rarely received a coherent answer. “Why did the composer write the song in the key of C while flatting every single B in the composition? Why not just write it in the key of F?” “What are keys?” “Why are piano keys spaced as they are?” “Why are guitar frets spaced as they are?” “Why are different guitar, violin, cello… strings tuned to different notes?”
A book that gave me a real, light bulb moment was Isaac Asimov’s, “Introduction to Physics.” In the section on sound, and sound waves, he breaks down note frequency and the mathematics. That’s the first time I encountered an explanation of the vibrations and how they work together.
I think Bennett did an excellent job of simply and coherently explaining key, musical concepts. For those of you fascinated by harmony, hopefully his explanation helps you see how it actually works and helps you to understand what vocalists mean when they say they are harmonizing “a fifth above” or “a third below” the lead singer, and why they are choosing the intervals they choose.
For those of you interested in going beyond David Bennett’s video on the 12 notes, this: https://youtu.be/De97zQi5rzc Rick Beato video is excellent!
A few minutes into this I actually pulled out a pen and notebook and started filling pages with diagrams and text based on what he was saying. I “knew” of most everything (everything?) he covers here, but I did not understand the how or why. As I wrote above, I have asked countless people questions about this stuff and even professional musicians rarely know the reasons, or are capable of explaining. There is some overlap with the Bennett video, which you should find helpful, but if you digest everything in this 45 minute video (and it would likely take multiple viewings) you can pretty much understand almost any explanation any musician would give for a composition or solo. Beato does a great job of showing where the terms come from using aural and visual queues. If you tie that back to the physics and math in the Bennett video you’ll have a complete understanding of how and why it works.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Thanks for the link. I haven’t watched it yet, but it sounds fascinating.
neo:
Agree. I sent Rufus’s comment thread to our choir director as she would also probably enjoy it as well. She also teaches French Horn. Anyway, vouched for Rufus of course. 🙂
Thanks Rufus — I too am interested in such detailed and technical explanations about anything to do with music and sound, and will definitely watch that later today!
Rufus et al, You might want to look at the book, Physics and Music by Donald White. I used it as a text when I used to teach the course.
We had an Arts&Technology certificate program at the college, and the course was a requirement for those in the music track. Fun course to teach, and the math was held at algebra level, though I had to do some “hand -waving” when we got to Fourier. But they got the idea enough that with a 1 channel synthesizer they were able to reproduce a single note which actually sounded like a piano, guitar, etc. Never gave them a flute as a instrument to reproduce….that would have been too easy 😉
physicsguy,
I think the mathematics behind it is why my particular brain appreciates Baroque and Classical music so much and I start to fade as it progresses to Romantic and the abominable Atonalists. 😉 (Although, oddly, I love a lot of modern jazz, even bebop.)
You can literally break the Baroque Brandenburg and Mozart compositional stuff into mathematical processes; harmony, point, counterpoint. Since I’m a stellar test taker I somehow tested into Intermediate, Engineering level Calculus my freshman year of College despite never having any Calc in High School (or even being an Engineering major!). I struggled the first few weeks until I stumbled onto listening to the local, Classical music station while studying. Something about that music in the background helped fire the necessary neurons to get it all to resonate for me.
One other thing that is a “Eureka” moment for some people regarding written music.
Bennet breaks down the 12 notes, and why they are what they are and he explains how they were ultimately divided into precise intervals from one another. Even though some are just a tad off vibrationally (or Herz-wise), making them the exact same interval from one another was more convenient for instrument design and construction. Those intervals were named “half steps.” C to D is a step, so C to C sharp (or D flat, same note) is a half step. In Western music there are no more finite gradations beyond half steps (and Bennett explains why).
These were actual people in history simply trying to figure out convenient ways to coordinate all this stuff as it was being invented and created.
When it came to designing a convenient method for folks to read and write what was happening on the instruments the folks involved eventually stumbled onto what we know today as musical notation. It was the quickest symbolic method composers could come up with to convey the music in their head to performers.
So here is the “Eureka” thing that some people do not notice. I’ve even met
musicians who did not make this connection (especially guitarists).
The musical staff we are all familiar with is simply a piano (or harpsichord, or organ) keyboard turned vertically.
See this: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ce/99/64/ce9964a5a12929fb02d1dca884e4f682.png
Each new note is a “whole” step. The half steps are represented by writing the note with a sharp or flat superscript (C#, Dflat*).
If you take the keyboard in that image and flip it 90 degrees counter clockwise you get the musical staff! That’s all “reading” and “writing” music is. Overlaying a keyboard 90 degrees counter clockwise onto paper. Western musicians wants to be able to read each note in the song from left to right, as quickly as possible, so the keyboard runs up the page from bottom to top.
*Sorry, don’t know how to code the flat symbol in word press.
And, when you understand the challenge of coming up with a concise way to read and write music you understand where the “sharps” and “flats” come from. It’s easier to keep track of 8 things instead of 12, and writing vertically on paper it’s more compact to have 8 intervals instead of 12. It takes up 75% of the needed space. So, use a superscript for those half intervals between the whole notes.
And how would Julie Andrews have ever trained those bratty, Von Trapp children to sing with four additional tones? “Doe a deer, a female deer then a slightly higher pitched female deer, or slightly dimmer, less gold drop of sun…”
Another unanimous Supreme Court decision. (Is that 5 in a row?) They hold that an illegal granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) may not automatically convert that into Lawful Permanent Resident (LPR) status.
Guess who wrote the opinion. Associate Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee.
@Rufus:
Definitely something about classical music and the gray matter.
Also there’s Change Ringing. Conway’s Game of Life for your Ears.
Zaphod – Everything I know about change ringing, I learned from Dorothy L. Sayers in her Lord Peter Wimsey mystery “The Nine Tailors.”
Had to look up Conway’s Game. This site lets you “play” a lot of simulations.
https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/9912396/
@AesopFan:
If you like Dorothy Sayers, then you’ll probably like Michael Innes too!
Sayers has a second, less-literary immortality in the Guinness Toucan advertisements which one commonly sees amongst the curated artifacts in Fake Irish Pubs.
Back to Conway, from such a simple thing, much can grow:
https://www.ics.uci.edu/~welling/teaching/271fall09/Turing-Machine-Life.pdf
The hyper-prodigy, hyper-genius and hyper-self-regarding Steve Wolfram of Mathematica fame has had a lot to say about Cellular Automata too.
https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/
Ed Dutton has a bone to pick with Harry the Half Blood Prince and his Mulatto Mistress:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/LMk578TWcnjq/