@zwol - yes, people do this! In 1563, a music theorist named Benedetti showed that you could create a simple melody that would keep creeping up because it ends at a frequency of 81/80 higher than where it starts. This is called a "comma pump". You can hear it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT71tggrrQc
and read about it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntonic_comma#Comma_pump
(1/2)
YouTube
One port, one cable, one Europe.
This holiday, unwrap the power of one: USB-C for all.
Yes, not just phones, tablets, and laptops. In three years, every charger will be under the same tree.
Because less waste, smarter choices, mean more for everyone, all year long.
@EUCommission Can you get television sets to have usb c ports as well? Makes it easier to plug laptops and steam decks in. 😛
@johncarlosbaez The very fact that people decided to divide notes into "white" and "black" instead of simply say that they are ultimately all semitones is also something that will confuse me forever 🤣
@j_bertolotti - You're joking, but this stuff is serious to me. You sound like a physicist who is confused by the difference between kinetic energy and momentum. So I have to try to save you.
As I explained in my talk, the white notes were around long before the black notes were even invented. If you're singing "Happy Birthday" or some other simple song, you never need the black notes. The white notes form a simple and beautiful 7-note scale.
Around 1200 AD people started using extra notes, for good reasons which I could explain. These were first called "musica ficta", or "false notes". People added them to the keyboard as extra black keys. They're important only when you try to play more fancy music.
hard mode: getting texts in Dutch
very hard mode: getting texts not in textbook Dutch but Limburgs
iron man 1HP hard mode: as typed by a great grampa who never quite got the hang of these new phone thingies
@0xabad1dea impossible mode: getting them in friesian
Just intonation is great if you're playing in just one 'key', always ending each passage with the note I've been calling 1. But when people started trying to 'change keys', musicians were pressed into other tuning systems.
This is a long story, which I don't have time to tell right now. If you're curious, read my blog articles about it:
For more on Pythagorean tuning, read this:
https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2023/10/07/pythagorean-tuning/
For more on just intonation, read this series:
https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2023/10/30/just-intonation-part-1/
For more on quarter-comma meantone tuning, read this series:
https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2023/12/13/quarter-comma-meantone-part-1/
For more on well-tempered scales, read this series:
https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2024/01/11/well-temperaments-part-1/
And for more on equal temperament, read this series:
https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2023/10/13/perfect-fifths-in-equal-tempered-scales/
It's sad in a way that this historical development winds up with equal temperament: the most *boring* of all the systems, which is equally good, and thus equally bad, in every key. But the history of music is not done, and computers make it vastly easier than ever before to explore tuning systems.
What will come next? It's up to us. I hope next year you explore more of the wonders of music.
(32/n, n = 32)
@johncarlosbaez Do you know if anyone has ever done much with, er, *not* rolling the parallelogram up into a torus? Instead continuing the sequences of exact 3/2 and 5/4 steps indefinitely, and accepting that you will never get back exactly to an octave? Exact 1:2 ratios could still be used for harmonies within chords.
hard mode: getting texts in Dutch
very hard mode: getting texts not in textbook Dutch but Limburgs
iron man 1HP hard mode: as typed by a great grampa who never quite got the hang of these new phone thingies
@aleen same. We are about to do a two day drive to see my nephew for his bday and we bring a stack of extra masks with us.
@jonty oh god it was SO WEIRD
he's got a new solar inverter and battery setup.
it's doing some sort of weird backwards-ass network switching onboard, where it acquires an IP address over DHCP but then has a second IP at whatever the last DHCP-assigned octet is times 4. and then it sends so much UDP broadcast traffic that it kills the router's DHCP service and prevents anything else from getting an address, even though everything with an IP can route just fine.
@gsuberland @jonty If the last octet primary address is greater than 64 decimal it does ... what?
Thanks for listening as @alex and I and all our guests made it through with ridicule as praxis, and join us for more next year! For all of the above as one newsletter post, plus Fresh AI Hell Wrapped, check out:
https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/fresh-ai-hell-wrapped/
A thread of our most downloaded episodes for 2025! w/ @alex production by Christie Taylor and Ozzy Llinas Goodman.
🎁🧵>>
@j_bertolotti - You're a smart guy, you can handle it. Yes a fifth is 7 semitones up, but it's the 5th tone. "Semitones" are the white and black keys, but "tones" are the white keys. White keys are the basic stuff of the major scale.
@johncarlosbaez The very fact that people decided to divide notes into "white" and "black" instead of simply say that they are ultimately all semitones is also something that will confuse me forever 🤣
From 2005-2010 I had a tendency to use photography to manage being in crowds and events. Being a self-appointed photographer was a way to avoid social interactions I barely understood. But it also means that I can’t really post any of it. So, instead here are some of the few I can post
These two are unironically a couple of my favourite photos. The window to the old used book store on Hverfisgata created a kind of impromptu collage
From 2005-2010 I had a tendency to use photography to manage being in crowds and events. Being a self-appointed photographer was a way to avoid social interactions I barely understood. But it also means that I can’t really post any of it. So, instead here are some of the few I can post
@johncarlosbaez typo? 65/45 -> 64/45 😬
@andrewg - definitely a typo, the number 65 has no place in this game! I'll fix it! Thanks. This will spare me some embarassment at my talk.
@juliepagano this looks so much more uniformly square than the first scarf I knit lol. Good job
@j_bertolotti - You're a smart guy, you can handle it. Yes a fifth is 7 semitones up, but it's the 5th tone. "Semitones" are the white and black keys, but "tones" are the white keys. White keys are the basic stuff of the major scale.
On my way to #39c3 with my longtime traveling companion, Large Bag. I’ll be talking about making my own #crossStitch software on Day 4 (the 30th) at 11AM CET in Fuse ( https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/en/event/detail/i-hated-all-the-cross-stitch-software-so-i-made-my-own-my-deranged-outsider-software-suite-for-making-deranged-outsider-art ) - please come by if your schedule/hangover allows :)
If yesterday was a day you were simply trying to get through, I’m pleased to report it is now today.
News and community around mavnn.eu projects.
