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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   3499 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 24, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Any musicians there? Is there a word for musical instruments that can play only one melody simultaneously and those who can play several? Is it "polytonic"?

Like, wind instruments can play a single note by definition.

You can play two strings simultaneously on a violin, but it's usually a chord. I think you could change the pitch of only one string to make the melody more complex, but you can't play eights on one string and quarters on the other.

I have no idea if you can play two melodies on a guitar. Theoretically it should be possible, but I can't think of an example.

But a piano or a harp can do this.

Here's Metamorphosis II arranged for a harp. Here's the same composition arranged for a violin and a piano. Lavinija can play both the rhythm line (can I call it the baritone line?), the bass note and the main melodies on her harp, but Anne Akiko can only play the main melody, she shares the bass notes with Reiko Uchida on the piano and Reika has to play the baritone line.

Or, to invert the question, is there a word for music you can arrange for the piano and can't arrange for the flute? Even if that flute was so long it could play any note?

I think part of your problem is your terminology. No music has more than one 'melody' happening at the same time. There are 'countermelodies' which often support or contrast a melody (example, Bach fugues) but very few pieces truly have two melodies at the same time. in this clip Chales Ives has two groups of the orchestra play 'America' in two keys in two different rhythms, literally two melodies.

@KMC I think fills in your other question.

Or, to invert the question, is there a word for music you can arrange for the piano and can't arrange for the flute? Even if that flute was so long it could play any note?

Not really, as in as far as I'm aware there isn't a specific term. There are limitations to every instrument, and it's up to the arranger to arrange things in a way that makes sense for the instrument(s) the person is arranging from the original material.

I have no idea if you can play two melodies on a guitar.

In principle one could, using two-handed tapping.

Fingerpicking can achieve the same result. Undeleted and edited to add: The easiest example is probably the intro to Stairway To Heaven. All the higher notes work together as the melody. The low notes are a much simpler melody, descending from A to E chromatically. That means without skipping any out-of-key notes. Just for reference, there are 12 notes in an octave, and most scales are 7 of those 12. And, as the other guy says, the lower part isn't "officially" a melody because there can only be one melody, but if you played it on its own it definitely counts as a melody, albeit a boring one.

One of my favorite things to play is a solo acoustic arrangement of Scarborough Fair, which has two (and a half?) melodic lines. Sure, when you put it all together it's more like a melody with parallel thirds and occasionally a third voice, but the main two voices are separate melodies. The melodies move together at times, contrary at other times. (Contrary in this context means one goes higher, the other goes lower).

Tapping greatly improves the ability to play separate lines with larger intervals within the voices, but it's entirely unnecessary. The distance between the lowest string and the highest (assuming standard tuning) is two full octaves. That's 24 notes on a piano for any laymen in the audience. Who am I kidding, I'm a layman too.

If this is hard to follow, I blame holiday drunkenness.

I have no idea if you can play two melodies on a guitar. Theoretically it should be possible, but I can't think of an example.

What you're thinking of is counterpoint, I'd say, and whether you can tell the two melodies apart depends on the quality of the musician and the quality of the composition. It's much harder to distinguish multiple voices on the same instrument than it is between different instruments.

Any musicians there? Is there a word for musical instruments that can play only one melody simultaneously and those who can play several? Is it "polytonic"?

The phrase is technically polyphony, apologies to @Ioper, since I was confusing polyphony in music with polyphony in instruments. I'm not sure calling instruments polyphonic was prevalent before synthesizers, since that appears to be the main reason to use the word.

Polytonic means can play more than one tone, so monotonic means only one tone, like a drone or drum.

I would say monophonic and polyphonic respectively.

This can refer both to the music itself and an instrument.

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