tsiivola
1yr ago
A man once wanted to learn to play the bass, so he went to a teacher. First lesson they learned to play the open E string, just plucking the string, nothing else. Second lesson they learned to play the open A string, again just plucking the string, nothing else. The third lesson they were supposed to learn the D string in a similar manner, but the student never showed up again.
The teacher bumped into the man on the street one day by chance and asked him: "Why don't you want to learn the bass any more? Was it not a suitable instrument for you?". The student replied: "No, it's nothing like that. I just haven't had time to come to lessons because I have so many paying gigs now."
Now that is a joke, but it can show a different perspective on things.
You can spend six months learning basic chords on the guitar and afterwards you can sing simple songs and accompany yourself on the guitar. At that point other people might want to listen to you, and there is a small chance you might even get paid doing it. Alternatively you can spend six months learning some kinds of finger exercises, but at that point nobody will want to listen to you, and you have to wonder if you wasted your time. So maybe it makes sense to build the minimum viable product first and then add the bells and whistles later, if you think you need them.
tsiivola
1yr ago
The best way to get started in music is, of course, the most boring way—get a beginner etude book for the instrument you want to play and start off with very basic stuff meant to familiarize you with the notes and rudimentary music theory before progressing to simple songs of the "Mary Had a Little Lamb" variety.
This actually seems backwards. You should start with something that is simple and very familiar, such as "Mary Had a Little Lamb". It should be simple so that it is easy to execute, and familiar so that you can easily tell when you make a mistake when it doesn't sound like you expect it to sound. Then later you might want to look into etudes if you want to work on some technical aspects of playing your instrument.
If the music is already familiar to you then things might be easier, but most likely you will be lost and confused in the beginning, no matter what, and what you really need is the ability to tolerate that. Then you can try out different things and see what happens and little by little the confusion evaporates.
whose guitar skills consist solely of strumming the chords in root position, about which this video is the last word: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BEWQNKbXHQk.
That video seems pretty mistaken overall. He first gives two examples of people playing these so called "zombie chords", then starts going on about how they sound bad because the chords are in root position, when actually in the two examples the C and D chords are not in root position, the C major has a G in the bass and the D major has A in the bass. They would probably sound better if they actually were in root position.
tsiivola
1yr ago
There are musically talented people in both her and her husband's family and one person with absolute pitch.
So it seems her mother, who knows nothing of music, claims that some great uncle "may have had absolute pitch".
Most people in your average amateur choir has decent relative pitch. This isn't a hard to acquire skill!
Yes, for some definition of "decent relative pitch", I am sure this statement is true. Yet, like before, the statement remains somewhat vague.
I know a bunch of people with AP and they aren't any better at music than those without, at least not in the way she describes.
Or they are at the same level as others around them, but have spent an order of magnitude less effort to get there.
The claim that absolute pitch is a significant advantage is in no way reliant on this one blog post. Here is a study describing how people with AP are better at a dictation task: http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/pdf/JASA-2010_128_890-893.pdf
tsiivola
1yr ago
This describes most people with some of musical talent.
Again, sure, for some definition of "some musical talent" this statement is definitely true. And, again, without learning more about said definition the statement remains almost meaningless.
One has to wonder how she ever got in.. this is a very base line ability.
One has to wonder why the school was so unable to teach this ability, if it is taught with some frequency and requires no "grand effort".
The post itself is available here: https://archive.is/ru6sw
tsiivola
1yr ago
Do you think something like the Harry Potter novels and the whole celebrity culture formed around them is useful for something? I have never read any of the Harry Potter books, and I can fully agree with one part of what you said: "the passion with which some people devote themselves to it has always seemed so alien to me"
tsiivola
1yr ago
Relative pitch is just knowing what the interval between tones are. This doesn't require some grand effort to learn.
Sure, for some definition of "knowing the interval between tones" this is certainly a true statement. But unfortunately until we shine more light on that definition the statement is almost meaningless.
What you said about absolute pitch might as well apply to relative pitch.
But it does not seem to. In the blog post the writers son has "stunning effortlessness when it comes to his music lessons", "finds it easy to [...] improvise in any key", "never struggles with memorizing the music he is assigned", but the writer in the past had to drop out of music school because learning "just the interval between tones" proved to be too grand of an effort.
tsiivola
1yr ago
And yet it is curious how you consider it bragging while simultaneously claiming that you place very little value on the thing being bragged about. If the blog post was about a parent teaching their child to wiggle their ears, would you be commenting about how we don't need tiger moms forcing their children to become geniuses that accomplish great things such as being able to wiggle their ears?
One more thing...
Humblebragging about your trilingual kids who have perfect pitch is a bit much.
"You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."
Bragging is when you say something positive about yourself. Humble bragging is when you say something negative about yourself, but at the same time reveal things that make it possible for other people to infer some positive thing about yourself. Do you think the blog post we are discussing really is humble bragging, or is it just bragging?
tsiivola
1yr ago
"Oh, so you taught your child to read. That's nice, dear, but I honestly don't see the applicability of something like literacy. Sounds like a humble brag to me."
The above is approximately how your comment sounds to me. A kid might be talented at something even if he remains illiterate his whole life, but there are most likely multiple things related to the talent that become easier, quicker or even possible in the first place through learning to read and write.
You can probably do most of what people with absolute pitch do by learning to identify pitches relatively, but for some reason it seems that developing this so called "relative pitch" takes a lot of effort, but absolute pitch kind of builds momentum and just grows on its own once you get it started.
I think there might be some kind of fear of inequality behind a lot of the dismissals of absolute pitch, such as there were on hacker news commenting this same blog post. I think the idea of some people being in a completely different category and having an advantage due to it is terrifying to many people, and a way to cope with the terror is to dismiss the existence of such advantage.
tsiivola
1yr ago
I think the reason Hitler is so hated is simply because he started a war against "us" and, even worse, he almost won. If Hitler had won, everyone would have soon gotten used to the new normal. If Hitler had been defeated easily, the whole war would have been soon largely forgotten. But almost losing a war leaves people nervous and they have to curse the enemy whenever they even think of him, just to soothe their nerves. People on the other side of the world who did not directly participate in the war do not feel the same way. There is probably an ice cream factory somewhere in Asia making Hitler branded ice cream, and to them he is just a famous figure with a recognizable moustache, no more associated with great evil than Elvis Presley or Albert Einstein.
So there is no abstract internalized value system or anything like that involved, it's just a historical accident.
Some people have called Christianity a death worshipping cult. Death of Jesus being the main symbol, martyrs effectively committing suicide, obsessing on life after death, and so on. Maybe that is just something you will have to accept if you want to stay in the cult, instead of trying to follow all kinds of flawed arguments in order to find a rationalization that is not revolting to you.
tsiivola
2yr ago
Or cases like the one I heard about from a former job: the guy was married, had an affair with a subordinate, then left the job for a better one elsewhere. He also left the subordinate pregnant with twins, broke up with his wife, but didn't take his mistress with him to his new job and new town. That's a case where if the woman had listened to advice about not shitting where you eat, she would have come out of it better all round - but of course, it's all "but I love him and he loves me", until it ends badly.
The workplace does not really seem to be relevant here. The main problem seems to be that a woman had an affair with an untrustworthy man who left her while she was pregnant and moved to another town. If the woman had changed to another job during the affair so as not to "shit where she eats", would the man have suddenly turned out to be more trustworthy and not leave her behind like that?
Compare to a made up example of a guy who one day went to his job at the warehouse where a crate fell on his head and he died. If he had followed the advice "never use public transport" he would not have been able to go to his job and would still be alive. Technically it is true, but it doesn't really demonstrate that the advice "never use public transport" is good.
(There's also another case, tangentially related to that job, where a person associated with the organisation had an affair and dumped his wife for the new younger squeeze; his ex-wife went ballistic and went to the cops about alleged dodgy financial dealings of his, which eventually saw him serving a jail sentence. Do not fuck around unless you are very, very sure that finding out won't send you to the slammer!)
I'm not sure if this example is also meant to illustrate how workplace romances are bad, because it is not clear if the new girlfriend was working at the same organization, but here too the workplace itself does not seem to be relevant in any way. The problem seems to be that the guy did something illegal which the wife knew about, and when he angered her she told the police about it. Would the wife have been less angry if the new girlfriend had not been a colleague, and thus he had not "shat where he eats"?
The linked Wikipedia article says: "two hours after the attack began, Israel informed the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv that its military forces had mistakenly attacked a U.S. Navy ship"
Without knowing anything else it does seem that Israel indeed doesn't lie about this sort of thing.
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