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This is a bit off topic, but since you mentioned your guide: I hope this doesn't come off as hostile, but the guide you linked contains a number of inaccuracies and oversimplifications - it's kind of naive in an endearing way, but also leaves the reader with the impression that it covers all there is to music. I guess what I'm saying is it's fine to restrict yourself in what you include in the guide, or even simplify things, but it should be clear that the topic (i.e. music) is far richer and more complex.

To give an example, this it of course not true:

> Only a limited set of frequencies is used in music. All these frequencies (that exist in music) can be played by a piano.


Yeah, I think a good discussion on music theory is starting from first principles, explaining Pythagorean tuning, then explaining 5-limit just intonation, the explaining we compromised on 12-tone equal temperament because it made tuning and changing keys a lot simpler, at the expenses of some notes being slightly out of tune (e.g. the minor and major thirds deviate by about 15 cents from their 5-limit just intonated “ideal” tunings).

You're saying its not possible to tune a piano to an arbitrary set of 88 pitches?

Aside from that not being what was said (the parent’s pull-quote is wrong in multiple ways), it is in fact not possible to tune a piano to any arbitrary set of 88 pitches without changing the design so dramatically and fundamentally that it would no longer be a piano. The triangular shape of a grand determined by the strings lengths, the placement of the pins, the use of double/triple strings in some frequency ranges, and design of the sound board, all permit only a very limited range of frequencies for each key on the keyboard. You very obviously cannot take an existing piano and tune it to 88 keys of A0, nor to 88 keys of C9.

That's clearly not what was meant, even without the context of this following bit:

> To describe tones that exist in music, we can describe tones that exist on a piano. There are only two rules:

> the first key must play a tone of 27.5 Hz each next key must play a tone 6% higher than the previous key

(This is not to mention that at a 1.06x increase per half step you're going to be sharp by 1 cent / octave which starts to add up).


Of course you can, but that's not what's implied by the quote.

In addition to microtonality, many instruments (and the human voice) are capable of infinite tuning, and musicians will deviate from the "correct" note (as played by an even-tempered instrument) based on chord structure, voice leading, etc.


That's not what "tuning" means. Yes, fretless string instruments, the human voice, instruments like the trombone are all capable of being played with arbitrary or semi-arbitrary pitch. But they are still either tuned in some way, or never tuned at all. Performance is not tuning.

Also quarter step bends in guitar and vibrato in general.

there are absolutely pitches that an arbitrary piano cannot be tuned to. it is also non-trivial to tune a piano.

Since an "arbitrary piano" is tuned by turning screws, like simpler string instruments, the only pitches that it cannot be tuned to are those that fall outside the range of each string. Departing from the usual inharmonically tempered 12-EDO tuning would just sound strange, possibly outside some piano tuner's professional comfort zone.

https://www.modartt.com/pianoteq_overview :) Very high quality and affordable software modeled piano. It is rather easy to tune via Scala KBD formatted files.

Not a piano, and not relevant to the parent remark.

And that isn't a nuanced opinion; a common one among rigid materialists. Its not the best piano for a stage, but I am sure it could fool your ears in a recording. Morpheus would think it was a piano too. "What is real? ..."

I don't think you are wrong, per se, but at the same time the skill level of late-game (or even mid-game) encounters has also been increasing. Plus, they usually aim to strike a balance between less intensive but also less efficient activities vs. the ones requiring frequent clicks and full attention but offering quicker progression.

Yup, the HN auto-filtering of titles often messes them up...


'How' is one of the most important conjunctive adverbs in the English language, and HN filters it out?

I'm just going to call that exactly as I see it - send the people writing these filtering rules back to middle school so they can learn basic English.



Are there any good examples of where removing the leading "how" has improved the title? Or some list of title filtering rules with concrete examples of why they're implemented?


We don't keep track of that (too many things to keep track of) and I can't remember anything*. Sorry!

* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...


> given a file of compressed text files, adding a new text to it expands it more or less depending on how different the new text is from the compressed.

The 3b1b videos mention how this concept may be used to find similarities between different languages. Researchers have been able to get results that closely resemble how languages are usually grouped into families.


Afaik there wasn't a single widely accepted standard in the Baroque era, but rather different places had different tunings, with the "normal A" varying roughly between 400 and 500 Hz.


But what if Tony the Pony comes?


An important tenet of modern education is that true knowledge is that which the learner (re)constructs in their mind. Heuristic learning (i.e. "trying to figure things out") is often a great way to do this.


Definitely. As instructors, we see this in action all the time. We describe stuff in writing and in lecture, discuss it with the students, and everybody seems to have good understanding. And then we have them implement it.

And that's when the shit hits the fan. :-D Only after concerted effort do the students actually gain understanding.


On another post I've already argued that Romans already had a proverb "Scribere bis legere." Translated, this means "writing is reading twice".

In practice, what this means is that you have to know how to reproduce the knowledge you've read, in your words. Only then can you be sure you've mastered what you've read. It's the reason for homework and all other stuff we have to do. Reading something five or more times simply does not suffice for our brains.


>For classical students, theory doesn't really start until college.

Well, unless, you are studying here in Hungary, for example, where it starts pretty much right away... (though it is a separate class).


Maybe this is the reason behind the old saying: "All of the good composers were either deaf or Hungarian."


"Normie" and "happens to own one or two extra homes" seem a bit contradictory to me... And doesn't everyone who invests in something that makes them money exploit economic conditions?


How does one become a "student of floating point math idiosyncracies"?


By enrolling at “Floating Point Math Idiosyncrasy University” I suppose


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