If you could pick a point in time to live in, when would it be? Unfortunately you're probably wrong regardless of what you answered. Too far back and it's unlikely that you will be able to eat or drink anything with that feeble 21st century immune system that you're styling. Go even further back and you're just asking for trouble- you don't know how to hunt!
So, what about the future? Well, there is the chance that things will continue to get worse. Drug resistant pathogens may win out in the immunity arms race, global warming might make it hard to support our current population. North Korea might only pretend to be comedically hermetic because they are secretly technologically advanced; fearing that other countries would use their technology for war; but are unfortunately found out by a certain superpower that nukes the world back into the stone age. What was I on about? Oh yeah, well, assuming that doesn't happen and first world problems continue to exist here's one you haven't considered. There will be way too much media.
Think about it. Look at a list of 100 critically acclaimed films from the past 100ish years of commercial cinema. In the lifespan of one generation that list would double. Then consider how your favourite film, say, the first live-action "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie might not even be on that list. As a matter of point, how can you discount the incredible entertainment value of films that would be on the inverse list? Films such as "Carnasaur", "Dungeons and Dragons" and "Titanic"?
How large is your itunes library? Assuming you actually like all of that music and, unlike me, you don't have music that you only put on for comedic value (you know, Scatman John, Rick Astley etc.) that's probably a lot of music that you like. Multiply that by a bajillion- there's already thousands of bands that you would probably like but haven't heard of. Music's a lot easier to produce than films at this point in time, and thanks to the internet anyone can distribute it. Popular recorded music has been about since the early 1900's with wax cylinders but, like populations, recordings have exploded in number over the years. What's the big deal you think? Don't we have this situation when it comes to books? To that I say: "I dunno, I don't think so.".
Yes, the written word has been around for a very long time. The Egyptians had one of the earliest written languages and they were around 5000 years ago (just think about that for a second). Even before the invention of the printing press when all documents were replicated using the now antiquated monk.0 software system there were a lot of very culturally significant things being written down. Haven't we already reached the point of too much literature based media and isn't the effect of this negligible?
I don't think it's the same. When it comes to literature we have many summations. Literature, though indispensable, is quite a bulky way of recording information- this is because it can be impeccably precise. It's the high resolution image of data storage, I suppose. Whether its a natural human pursuit or a modern development I do not know but the streamlining and want to make more efficient is a prevalent impulse. Literature is a very time consuming medium so I think humans continuously trim the ephemera from it. Like a bustling hive mind we store what is important and discard what is, well, ephemeral. This might be because the application of literature is so much more prominent in our consumption of the medium compared to film and music. Film is mostly in my opinion a feast for the eyes and is augmented through sound. Music is food for the ears. Literature is food for the brain. Everything is simulated; the onus is heavily placed on the consumer and if you decide that the "author is dead" it results in a book being highly ambiguous and therefore a highly intellectually stimulating task should you choose it to be.
Furthermore books are very well labelled. They tend to be about a certain subject or idea. Though the same could be said about films and music the director or producer or advertiser does not or cannot make that subject as clear as a front cover, title, authors note and blurb can. Language is precise like that.
Maybe I'm right, I personally think that I'm striking the nail with glancing blows. Perhaps my literature vs. other media argument is flawed but the point remains- in the future (depending on how far you go of course) there will be many many more hit films and musicians than there are now. How many films can you truly "see before you die" and will we lose anything when eventually films such as "Shawshank Redemption" or "The Deer Hunter" or "*that film you really like*" are left on the wayside of cinematic history? What about when the standard increases so much that Nirvana and The Beatles are comparatively close in impact and message?
Looking for more food for the brain? Tune in for Part Deux!
Part 2- http://heywhateveridunno.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-future-of-media-part-deux.html
Josh.
Wednesday, 9 April 2014
Buildings: More Like People Than We Thought?
I don't have any formal knowledge of architecture or any delusion that I do so don't worry, this isn't one of those write-ups. I just learned something that I thought I would share. tl;dr? The points in paragraph 4!
So, one of my jobs is in construction. I core concrete. That is, I make really big holes in walls and floors with a really big drill. Why? Because people fuck up alllllll the time on building sites by filling in places where there should be holes. I really don't enjoy construction work. I could go into it but I would summarise it as unstimulating. Regardless I try to keep an ear and eye out for things that are interesting.
The other day we were working on a building in downtown Vancouver. The concrete that the building is made from is very poor. There are gaps of air in the concrete and It turns to sand with great ease. The building is both old and poorly built.
Whilst waiting on the floor below the hole to make sure nobody got brained by the core that was about to fall down the guy that usually works on the building and addressed something that I had thought about everytime we worked there. Surely if this building is poorly built already doing these kinds of renovations won't help anyone. Turns out, that's totally true! You can only renovate so many times before the building needs to be demolished and rebuilt. It's like how each time a cell replicates itself it's not as good as the cell that went before it.
On a more sombre note it is disconcerting seeing a building of such poor quality. Vancouver is supposedly due for a huge earthquake. I am dubious about the predictability of earthquakes and saying that Vancouver is 50 years overdue really doesn't mean much to me. Geological stats, man! How long is 50 years really? And how reliable are the movements of tectonic plates? Are they really so repetitive? Regardless, a building that is made from hard shelled bubbles is not a favourable place to work at in a quake danger zone.
Good luck Vancouver.
Josh.
So, one of my jobs is in construction. I core concrete. That is, I make really big holes in walls and floors with a really big drill. Why? Because people fuck up alllllll the time on building sites by filling in places where there should be holes. I really don't enjoy construction work. I could go into it but I would summarise it as unstimulating. Regardless I try to keep an ear and eye out for things that are interesting.
The other day we were working on a building in downtown Vancouver. The concrete that the building is made from is very poor. There are gaps of air in the concrete and It turns to sand with great ease. The building is both old and poorly built.
Whilst waiting on the floor below the hole to make sure nobody got brained by the core that was about to fall down the guy that usually works on the building and addressed something that I had thought about everytime we worked there. Surely if this building is poorly built already doing these kinds of renovations won't help anyone. Turns out, that's totally true! You can only renovate so many times before the building needs to be demolished and rebuilt. It's like how each time a cell replicates itself it's not as good as the cell that went before it.
On a more sombre note it is disconcerting seeing a building of such poor quality. Vancouver is supposedly due for a huge earthquake. I am dubious about the predictability of earthquakes and saying that Vancouver is 50 years overdue really doesn't mean much to me. Geological stats, man! How long is 50 years really? And how reliable are the movements of tectonic plates? Are they really so repetitive? Regardless, a building that is made from hard shelled bubbles is not a favourable place to work at in a quake danger zone.
Good luck Vancouver.
Josh.
Monday, 7 April 2014
A Thought for the Future.
Appeal to tradition is a pretty flaccid debating point. "It has been like this for a long time so it's probably a good idea for things to remain the same". When considering the general progression of humankind I think the validity and use of such an argument has eroded greatly. For example religion no longer has the once monolithic power that it once had- religion lacks strong logical arguments, its only bargaining chip for at least the past century has been the strength of its tradition.
Technology and science is still new and exciting. We barely have a century of modern scientific history. I wonder if eventually people will go "eh, my X is fast enough" and will fall back on an appeal to tradition to justify not improving things.
Yeah, I don't think so either. I bring this up because of condoms. Effective contraception since 1919! I mean, they've been good for that long, why bother using anything else?
Ha! I should get some sleep.
Sleep well my non-existent readership!
Josh.
Technology and science is still new and exciting. We barely have a century of modern scientific history. I wonder if eventually people will go "eh, my X is fast enough" and will fall back on an appeal to tradition to justify not improving things.
Yeah, I don't think so either. I bring this up because of condoms. Effective contraception since 1919! I mean, they've been good for that long, why bother using anything else?
Ha! I should get some sleep.
Sleep well my non-existent readership!
Josh.
Sunday, 6 April 2014
American vs. British Sense of Humour.
The British* and American sense of humour are often compared. The Americans that I have met often say that they love the "British sense of humour" but as far as I can tell most people aren't sure what the "British sense of humour" even is. I did some pontificating on the subject.
*Okay, I'm going to get this out of the way right now, there's not enough time to wait until the bottom of the page. Britain is NOT a country. Britain is NOT England. Britain is composed of 4 countries- England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Every time I type British I want to type English- it's the sense of humour I have the most experience with!
People, when I have pressed them to describe the British sense of humour, have cited Monty Python, sarcasm, and to a lesser sense deadpan delivery. The descriptions given to me by such people have confused me because Monty Python is a rather over-the-top silliness but the banter-based sarcasm of British humour is not as playful. This has been illustrated to me by Americans that have told me that they love Monty Python and really get the British sense of humour but have greeted sarcasm and joking with blank faces or goofy expressions, waiting for the punchline.
I think a better, deeper description of the British sense of humour is that the audience will make the joke funny for themselves. Details will be missed out by the comedian or sketch and not directly mentioned because the viewer or audience member are expected to work it out for themselves. The American sense of humour relies on mercilessly detailing the funny bits of the joke. To me it lacks nuance and at worst is obnoxious.
CASE STUDY!
Okay, bare with me. This example comes from "Our Robocop Remake", a scene by scene remake of the Robocop film with a comedic scope.
http://vimeo.com/85903713
Forward to 43.35 (beware of adult content if you are a bit too early). Robocop is an innocent, earnest (though mentally deficient) robocop trying his best in the big city after leaving home. This is a silly situation and is written quite nicely UNTIL 44.40. Throughout the scene we use our brain to work out that the narration and what we are shown do not line up. This is the precedent of the joke. 44.40 violates this unspoken precedent by lighting the joke up in neon and shouting "DO YOU GET THE JOKE NOW!?". If this scene had the "British" sense of humour the narration would say that it was the mayor's wife. The resolution of cognitive dissonance is the drive behind the joke, without it the fun silliness becomes dumb. In my opinion, of course!
CASE STUDY 2!
However, having said the above I think there are funny American comedians- some that are even popular! Louis C.K. is very funny. He doesn't say particularly shocking things like a British comedian such as Frankie Boyle or Jimmy Carr would say but he does challenge an audience. He steers clear of the cheap shots that make Bill Maher's audiences whoop with self-satisfaction and, from what I've seen, will not hit the audience over the head with what he thinks is the funny part.
Then there's the fringe with such examples as "Tim and Eric's" Cosmos sketch that, to me, are like the next evolution of the American sense of humour. I'm not saying it's incredible but I am saying that it's new and fun and different.
American's, I'm sorry to say that to the inhabitants of Britain, Belgium and Germany (nationalities that I have corroborated with), you generally have a very poor sense of humour. I'm also sorry to say that if you think you "get" sarcasm you probably don't. The British sense of humour and sense of sarcasm is deeply ingrained in our culture and has grown instep with our climate, you are already at a disadvantage I am afraid.
BUT, having said that you DO have things to be proud of and you are still finding your way as a nation. When you learn to not be so easily offended you can start to grow in all kinds of ways! Maybe one day you can look down on our sense of humour for its primitiveness :P
I'm so sorry everyone.
Josh.
*Okay, I'm going to get this out of the way right now, there's not enough time to wait until the bottom of the page. Britain is NOT a country. Britain is NOT England. Britain is composed of 4 countries- England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Every time I type British I want to type English- it's the sense of humour I have the most experience with!
People, when I have pressed them to describe the British sense of humour, have cited Monty Python, sarcasm, and to a lesser sense deadpan delivery. The descriptions given to me by such people have confused me because Monty Python is a rather over-the-top silliness but the banter-based sarcasm of British humour is not as playful. This has been illustrated to me by Americans that have told me that they love Monty Python and really get the British sense of humour but have greeted sarcasm and joking with blank faces or goofy expressions, waiting for the punchline.
I think a better, deeper description of the British sense of humour is that the audience will make the joke funny for themselves. Details will be missed out by the comedian or sketch and not directly mentioned because the viewer or audience member are expected to work it out for themselves. The American sense of humour relies on mercilessly detailing the funny bits of the joke. To me it lacks nuance and at worst is obnoxious.
CASE STUDY!
Okay, bare with me. This example comes from "Our Robocop Remake", a scene by scene remake of the Robocop film with a comedic scope.
http://vimeo.com/85903713
Forward to 43.35 (beware of adult content if you are a bit too early). Robocop is an innocent, earnest (though mentally deficient) robocop trying his best in the big city after leaving home. This is a silly situation and is written quite nicely UNTIL 44.40. Throughout the scene we use our brain to work out that the narration and what we are shown do not line up. This is the precedent of the joke. 44.40 violates this unspoken precedent by lighting the joke up in neon and shouting "DO YOU GET THE JOKE NOW!?". If this scene had the "British" sense of humour the narration would say that it was the mayor's wife. The resolution of cognitive dissonance is the drive behind the joke, without it the fun silliness becomes dumb. In my opinion, of course!
CASE STUDY 2!
However, having said the above I think there are funny American comedians- some that are even popular! Louis C.K. is very funny. He doesn't say particularly shocking things like a British comedian such as Frankie Boyle or Jimmy Carr would say but he does challenge an audience. He steers clear of the cheap shots that make Bill Maher's audiences whoop with self-satisfaction and, from what I've seen, will not hit the audience over the head with what he thinks is the funny part.
Then there's the fringe with such examples as "Tim and Eric's" Cosmos sketch that, to me, are like the next evolution of the American sense of humour. I'm not saying it's incredible but I am saying that it's new and fun and different.
American's, I'm sorry to say that to the inhabitants of Britain, Belgium and Germany (nationalities that I have corroborated with), you generally have a very poor sense of humour. I'm also sorry to say that if you think you "get" sarcasm you probably don't. The British sense of humour and sense of sarcasm is deeply ingrained in our culture and has grown instep with our climate, you are already at a disadvantage I am afraid.
BUT, having said that you DO have things to be proud of and you are still finding your way as a nation. When you learn to not be so easily offended you can start to grow in all kinds of ways! Maybe one day you can look down on our sense of humour for its primitiveness :P
I'm so sorry everyone.
Josh.
Teaching- It Totally Needs Fixing, Man.
I think that the teaching of most subjects is exceedingly poor. Excluding the sciences and mathematics; that perhaps self-select students because the subject content and the way in which it can be taught are so close to one another; music, art, languages are taught in a particularly poor way.
The sciences are quite binary in their approach- beyond the playful philosophy of hypotheses you will eventually be proven right or wrong. Of course, it would be a tragic misstep to neglect the need for creativity in mathematics and the sciences. For example, DNA's structure was able to be hypothesised and eventually proven because of the associative leaps that were made by Francis Crick when under the influence of LSD. There are many other examples both real and hypothetical that describe the imagination's role in the sciences but the driving force behind such subjects is the search for objective truth... perhaps the role of human pettiness and jealousy should not be underestimated either. (Newton and Hooke and the entire world of topology. Nerds, what can you do huh?)
I think that humans, though we try in earnest, are not designed (poor choice of words, I know) to deal with the abstract. "But what about philosophy and the metaphysical?" I hear you say. It is almost a recursive argument of quality beneath "Gödel, Escher, Bach" but I think that such subjects are an example of our inabilty to understand the abstract and not an example of our ability to channel it. Again, to be recursive and perhaps mundane and redundant we have philosophy as a platonic shadow for what the abstract is.
My reasoning can be scoffed at, I would do the same, but still I think humans excel at dealing with reality, not the non-physical. Food, genetic propagation, noises, touches, smells etc. These are categorical things that our brain loves to sort out for us. So, when we reach the entire body of a subject whose mantra is one that encourages perspective and opinion our brains struggle to adapt, there has to be a right and wrong, duh!
So, we do what comes naturally. Dissect, arrange and categorise. We can see it happen with 16th century prescriptivists who took the unarranged idiomatic nature of developing language and shoe horned rules around it. We can see it in the way that musical theory (especially systems of tuning)* was developed and the way that art is institutionalised and wrought with elitism that values the ticking of boxes, perhaps not emotional impact of artwork. (PERHAPS!)
Music, language, art. These are the subjects that I would like to look at. The way they are taught is extremely lacking. With the advent of adventurous coding and the almost unlimited sharing of knowledge via the internet we have, I think, seen classical schools of teaching effectively challenged. I say effectively because, let's be honest, the liberation of music from standard harmony by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Coltrane etc was a rather incredible failure. A failure as in it did not catch on. We could blame education perhaps but alas, this is not my PHD and I refuse to defend myself so thoroughly!
Music for me is a tough example for the development of teaching as I still think it is still taught inefficiently- general approaches do not make room for standard human interest and is too uncompromising in how it appeals to students. For example with most classical instruments a student will not be allowed to pass on learning scales. They are, of course, essential for the mastery of an instrument but the mindset of teaching does not make allowance for goals that differ from the ideal. Sometimes this is good, the elitist mindset forces those that are capable to strive for more but for the majority of people it builds a wall that they are too uninterested or discouraged to overcome. The reason I bring up music is to illustrate a failure in teaching. Let's look at a positive.
Languages. There are many different ways to learn. I don't think humans are so different from one another to proclaim that there are as many ways to learn as there are people- as some people might overzealously state- but there is indeed great variation amongst our species. Some people might beneficially learn from the classical way of learning a language. That is, slogging through grammar and then learning how to speak it. However with, as I mentioned before, the emergence of the internet, individuals without the class or credentials are able to proliferate their ideas. Sometimes this is TERRIBLE (see Deepak Chopra) but in the example of languages such an opportunity may be indispensable. Look to "Benny the Irish Polyglot" from www.fluentin3months.com/ who has perhaps pioneered a method of learning a language based around how we learn our first language. Without the ability to confront the hoi polloi many years ago this might have just resulted in an obscure school of language learning that would have been unable to overcome the accepted methods of the day and languished and died in the pools of privileged Bohemia that academia can sometimes be made from.
I think I might be straying off point. I don't know if I ever knew my point but I think my message is one of positivity. Get hyped! Humans are learning how to most efficiently impart knowledge, finally! I suppose if you consider the Matrix as point zero for the pursuit of instantaneous learning (psst, it's not) then we're making pretty okay headway. Look at Ed Cooke's memory centric learning program "Memrise" that capitilises on the brain in the same way our brains and bodies capitilise on simple limiting factors in order to optimally grow food and retain functioning enzymes. The cross pollination of disciplines such as coding, the social sciences, design and more to reach more efficient means of learning than the textbooks of even 10 years ago can only be positive. We are gradually moving beyond the idea of the future of learning being learning the curriculum from an ipad.
We're doing alright and though putting an overly large USB stick into the posterior of your brain will [still] result in death [for now] we're making the horrifically inefficient process of learning better all the time.
Rejoice.
*So yeah, tuning systems, also known as temperament, are screwed up. Over time we have split series' of notes in different ways. In Pythagorean times you would tune in 5ths. A problem with this would be you would tune your first fifth C-G your second one G-D your third one D-A until you got all the way around to F-C. The first C would be out of tune with the last one! It would be like walking up a staircase and finding yourself on a weird floor just beneath the floor that the staircase was supposed to lead too; Escher style! It would seem that the division of frequencies into the alphabet of music is unable to be perfect due to how we hear frequencies. This is a very deep subject; the embarrassing Uncle that really shouldn't be left alone with children of musicology; that is quite hard to understand. If you are interested look up "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony and Why You Should Care."
The sciences are quite binary in their approach- beyond the playful philosophy of hypotheses you will eventually be proven right or wrong. Of course, it would be a tragic misstep to neglect the need for creativity in mathematics and the sciences. For example, DNA's structure was able to be hypothesised and eventually proven because of the associative leaps that were made by Francis Crick when under the influence of LSD. There are many other examples both real and hypothetical that describe the imagination's role in the sciences but the driving force behind such subjects is the search for objective truth... perhaps the role of human pettiness and jealousy should not be underestimated either. (Newton and Hooke and the entire world of topology. Nerds, what can you do huh?)
I think that humans, though we try in earnest, are not designed (poor choice of words, I know) to deal with the abstract. "But what about philosophy and the metaphysical?" I hear you say. It is almost a recursive argument of quality beneath "Gödel, Escher, Bach" but I think that such subjects are an example of our inabilty to understand the abstract and not an example of our ability to channel it. Again, to be recursive and perhaps mundane and redundant we have philosophy as a platonic shadow for what the abstract is.
My reasoning can be scoffed at, I would do the same, but still I think humans excel at dealing with reality, not the non-physical. Food, genetic propagation, noises, touches, smells etc. These are categorical things that our brain loves to sort out for us. So, when we reach the entire body of a subject whose mantra is one that encourages perspective and opinion our brains struggle to adapt, there has to be a right and wrong, duh!
So, we do what comes naturally. Dissect, arrange and categorise. We can see it happen with 16th century prescriptivists who took the unarranged idiomatic nature of developing language and shoe horned rules around it. We can see it in the way that musical theory (especially systems of tuning)* was developed and the way that art is institutionalised and wrought with elitism that values the ticking of boxes, perhaps not emotional impact of artwork. (PERHAPS!)
Music, language, art. These are the subjects that I would like to look at. The way they are taught is extremely lacking. With the advent of adventurous coding and the almost unlimited sharing of knowledge via the internet we have, I think, seen classical schools of teaching effectively challenged. I say effectively because, let's be honest, the liberation of music from standard harmony by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Coltrane etc was a rather incredible failure. A failure as in it did not catch on. We could blame education perhaps but alas, this is not my PHD and I refuse to defend myself so thoroughly!
Music for me is a tough example for the development of teaching as I still think it is still taught inefficiently- general approaches do not make room for standard human interest and is too uncompromising in how it appeals to students. For example with most classical instruments a student will not be allowed to pass on learning scales. They are, of course, essential for the mastery of an instrument but the mindset of teaching does not make allowance for goals that differ from the ideal. Sometimes this is good, the elitist mindset forces those that are capable to strive for more but for the majority of people it builds a wall that they are too uninterested or discouraged to overcome. The reason I bring up music is to illustrate a failure in teaching. Let's look at a positive.
Languages. There are many different ways to learn. I don't think humans are so different from one another to proclaim that there are as many ways to learn as there are people- as some people might overzealously state- but there is indeed great variation amongst our species. Some people might beneficially learn from the classical way of learning a language. That is, slogging through grammar and then learning how to speak it. However with, as I mentioned before, the emergence of the internet, individuals without the class or credentials are able to proliferate their ideas. Sometimes this is TERRIBLE (see Deepak Chopra) but in the example of languages such an opportunity may be indispensable. Look to "Benny the Irish Polyglot" from www.fluentin3months.com/ who has perhaps pioneered a method of learning a language based around how we learn our first language. Without the ability to confront the hoi polloi many years ago this might have just resulted in an obscure school of language learning that would have been unable to overcome the accepted methods of the day and languished and died in the pools of privileged Bohemia that academia can sometimes be made from.
I think I might be straying off point. I don't know if I ever knew my point but I think my message is one of positivity. Get hyped! Humans are learning how to most efficiently impart knowledge, finally! I suppose if you consider the Matrix as point zero for the pursuit of instantaneous learning (psst, it's not) then we're making pretty okay headway. Look at Ed Cooke's memory centric learning program "Memrise" that capitilises on the brain in the same way our brains and bodies capitilise on simple limiting factors in order to optimally grow food and retain functioning enzymes. The cross pollination of disciplines such as coding, the social sciences, design and more to reach more efficient means of learning than the textbooks of even 10 years ago can only be positive. We are gradually moving beyond the idea of the future of learning being learning the curriculum from an ipad.
We're doing alright and though putting an overly large USB stick into the posterior of your brain will [still] result in death [for now] we're making the horrifically inefficient process of learning better all the time.
Rejoice.
*So yeah, tuning systems, also known as temperament, are screwed up. Over time we have split series' of notes in different ways. In Pythagorean times you would tune in 5ths. A problem with this would be you would tune your first fifth C-G your second one G-D your third one D-A until you got all the way around to F-C. The first C would be out of tune with the last one! It would be like walking up a staircase and finding yourself on a weird floor just beneath the floor that the staircase was supposed to lead too; Escher style! It would seem that the division of frequencies into the alphabet of music is unable to be perfect due to how we hear frequencies. This is a very deep subject; the embarrassing Uncle that really shouldn't be left alone with children of musicology; that is quite hard to understand. If you are interested look up "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony and Why You Should Care."
Saturday, 5 April 2014
An Introduction to How Music Works.
Here is the first blog post in what will be a series on practical musical theory. The first post is going to be all about notes!
A A#/Bb B C C#/Db D D#/Eb E F F#/Gb G G#/Ab A
Above are all the notes that exist in music.Well, that is western music. Chinese music tends to consist of five whereas Indian music consists of many many more as there are notes between the 12 that we see above. Alas, that is another story, for another time, from a storyteller that knows the plot.
So, I said there are 12 notes in Western music but as you can see there are 18 letters above. Firstly, let's learn why there is an A at the start and an A at the end. These two notes are what is known as an "octave" apart. A note that is an octave higher will have the same quality as its lower counterpart, it will just sound higher in pitch.
An intuitive explanation can be found by comparing sound to colours. Below is a colour spectrum.
Humans only see in one octave. If you were a bee you would be able to extend the colour spectrum past violet to ultra violet- into the next octave.
The other extra letters, as you can see have symbols next to them. # is a sharp symbol and b is a flat symbol. To sharpen a note one would move their hands closer together by one fret on a guitar like instrument or move one adjacent key to the right on a piano (sorry fretless instrumentalists, I don't have a way to describe it for you!). To flatten a note one moves one fret downwards on a guitar or one adjacent key to the left on a piano- thus making the note lower in pitch.
The distance between a note and its flattened or sharpened neighbour is referred to in traditional musical theory as a semitone and in the more descriptive Americanisation as a half-step. Both ways of description are fine no matter what others tell you.
SO, if you sharpen an A you move up one semitone in pitch and end up at an A#. If you flatten a B you move one semitone down to a Bb. If you look at the note timeline above you can see that A# and Bb are bunched together. Alternatively if you refer to your instrument of choice you can see that A# and Bb occupy the same fret/key (void? My apologies once more, fretless musicians.) A# and Bb are the same note- the same pitch- and are referred to as A# or Bb depending on the context you find them in. The term for these couples of notes is an "enharmonic equivalent". They exist for a reason, but that reason is for another time.
Finally if you see this symbol ♮ it is referred to as a "natural". If this symbol precedes a note it means it is not a sharp or a flat. Simple.
PHYSICS!
For those of you that like physics an octave is when you take the vibrational frequency of a note and double it. for example, an A vibrates at 440Hz; if you were to program a computer to produce a sound of 880Hz it would be another A but an octave up. A quirk of how our brains interpret sounds means that a doubled frequency is interpreted as being the "same" note but higher in pitch. A very unwieldy analogy would be comparing flourescent green to normal green. They have the same quality, they are both green, but they are different to each other.
CULTURE!
In Germany the note B is referred to as H. Why? You know what, I'm not sure why but I know that this allowed a compositional quirk. Composers would sometimes open up a piece of music by spelling out their name. For example- B-A-C-H. Kind of like a musical autograph. Cool, huh!? The example in this paragraph also works because their Bb is a B. Craaazy!
UPDATE!
I now know why it is an "h". It apparently comes from a transliteration error where some dude wrote an h instead of a b. It just caught on.
Above are all the notes that exist in music.Well, that is western music. Chinese music tends to consist of five whereas Indian music consists of many many more as there are notes between the 12 that we see above. Alas, that is another story, for another time, from a storyteller that knows the plot.
So, I said there are 12 notes in Western music but as you can see there are 18 letters above. Firstly, let's learn why there is an A at the start and an A at the end. These two notes are what is known as an "octave" apart. A note that is an octave higher will have the same quality as its lower counterpart, it will just sound higher in pitch.
An intuitive explanation can be found by comparing sound to colours. Below is a colour spectrum.
Humans only see in one octave. If you were a bee you would be able to extend the colour spectrum past violet to ultra violet- into the next octave.
The other extra letters, as you can see have symbols next to them. # is a sharp symbol and b is a flat symbol. To sharpen a note one would move their hands closer together by one fret on a guitar like instrument or move one adjacent key to the right on a piano (sorry fretless instrumentalists, I don't have a way to describe it for you!). To flatten a note one moves one fret downwards on a guitar or one adjacent key to the left on a piano- thus making the note lower in pitch.
The distance between a note and its flattened or sharpened neighbour is referred to in traditional musical theory as a semitone and in the more descriptive Americanisation as a half-step. Both ways of description are fine no matter what others tell you.
SO, if you sharpen an A you move up one semitone in pitch and end up at an A#. If you flatten a B you move one semitone down to a Bb. If you look at the note timeline above you can see that A# and Bb are bunched together. Alternatively if you refer to your instrument of choice you can see that A# and Bb occupy the same fret/key (void? My apologies once more, fretless musicians.) A# and Bb are the same note- the same pitch- and are referred to as A# or Bb depending on the context you find them in. The term for these couples of notes is an "enharmonic equivalent". They exist for a reason, but that reason is for another time.
Finally if you see this symbol ♮ it is referred to as a "natural". If this symbol precedes a note it means it is not a sharp or a flat. Simple.
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| "Track pads and paint." The name of my next [first] novel I think. |
PHYSICS!
For those of you that like physics an octave is when you take the vibrational frequency of a note and double it. for example, an A vibrates at 440Hz; if you were to program a computer to produce a sound of 880Hz it would be another A but an octave up. A quirk of how our brains interpret sounds means that a doubled frequency is interpreted as being the "same" note but higher in pitch. A very unwieldy analogy would be comparing flourescent green to normal green. They have the same quality, they are both green, but they are different to each other.
CULTURE!
In Germany the note B is referred to as H. Why? You know what, I'm not sure why but I know that this allowed a compositional quirk. Composers would sometimes open up a piece of music by spelling out their name. For example- B-A-C-H. Kind of like a musical autograph. Cool, huh!? The example in this paragraph also works because their Bb is a B. Craaazy!
UPDATE!
I now know why it is an "h". It apparently comes from a transliteration error where some dude wrote an h instead of a b. It just caught on.
Thursday, 3 April 2014
Kitchens: You Can Even Have Fun In Them!
Hello friends, Romans and/or countrymen. After a lengthy hiatus from writing I am back. I don't have anything particularly deep or interesting to say but I feel that I must write something. I enjoy it and it totes ensures that I remember things from the past if I should ever find myself in the future.
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| A wizz in the kitchen I am not, yet I found myself here- I must have gotten lost. |
In the house that I live in (we're a motley bunch of travel-y types) in Vancouver we like to make our own bread. "How nice!" you coo. You would be cooing from the other side of your face; Daffy style; if you knew why. Food, and many things are impractically expensive over here. Bread is of poor quality, costs a lot more than it should and is gone in no time. We make our own for that reason.
After the adjustment period for which we spent many hours huddled around our freshly baked bread, scratching our heads as to why it didn't come out of the oven in slices, we got savvy to baking and started adding nutritious nuts and seeds. Today, I was feeling particularly fine so decided to try something out. The idea was to diffuse seed-ness into oil that I would then put into the bread. My choices were pumpkin, sesame, walnuts*, almonds and sunflower seeds. It is worth mentioning that I abstained from the poppy seeds- I wasn't sure if I would end up opiated. Below is the pictoral account (with captions!) of how that went down.
* Yup, walnuts are seeds. Don't worry, I'm embarrassed about your ignorance too.
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| Anyone up for a subtlety flavoured oil drink!? What? That sounds horrible? C'mon, be a sport! |
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| Francois looking on with baited breath and a glimmer of hope in his eye. |
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| ...Fuck. Back to the drawing board! And by that I mean the numerous places the ingredients came from so that I can do the exact same thing again but with less carbon! ... Nevermind, it sounded better as a metaphor! |
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| Try 2.0. Didn't even go to uni for photography. Believe it. |
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| Dual cooling. Cold water is in the bowl and an ice cube is in the oil. Hot stuff makes lumps in flour, so says Francois. |
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| Got there in the end. Now to let it prove, bake and be eaten. Updates to what I predict will be a fairly inconclusive culinary excursion will follow... SOON! |
So, it was very very good bread. All the people in the house said that it was particularly tasty and it remained soft and fluffy for 3 days (this is day 3 and it's still around). Maybe it was the inclusion of oil or maybe the flour combo, I'm not sure.
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| Inexpensive bread with inexpensive fake burgers! Excellent! |
Would you like to know how to make your own? Follow the below ingredients! My bread had about a ratio of 4:2 of brown to white flour (the below ingredients are for a small loaf) and I used more than 1 teaspoon yeast, but not much more. Add water slowly as you thoroughly knead the dough, leave it to prove for about 7-8 hours (Mine went for something like 15 hours because I fell asleep.) I bake the bread for more than an hour as the brown bits taste pretty great.
Don't forget the vengeance.
Stay sassy my non-existent readership!
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